Reviews of movies, anime, and the occasional TV show mixed with warnings on Blogger spam. Also to be found are musings on whatever I am thinking about - all from the point of view of being left to watch everything from the sidelines of life.
After much deliberation, the replacement for my PocketPC ended up being an unexpected bargain. This post was composed on my new iview CyPad 7" Android tablet. I am trying out the Blogger app and typing with my thumbs, which is taking a lot of getting used to. At least the touch screen works for me -- iPhones and iPads usually don,t work with my fingers.
I will write a proper review next week if I can get the latest ROM to flash. So far the camera is the only thing not working.
Fighting off a sinusitis flare up makes getting up and out to get a haircut more of a travail then it should be. Despite that, I survived and am no longer shaggy. In theory I am more presentable, but theories and reality are very divergent I find.
Currently I am working on HD screen captures from Captain America: The First Avenger for a review of the Blu-ray and DVD release. As I suspected, the film looks better in 2D than 3D. I cannot wait for that fad to die out again and from the way theater attendance has dropped the studios will be forced to give up within the next couple of years.
So far subscribing to Hulu Plus has been a good decision. I am finding things of interest that are not on free Hulu and have begun to dip my toe into the waters of Korean dramas. The show I started watching last night is particularly interesting because it blends a 17th century historical setting with The X-Files. If it sounds strange, that is because it is! Secret Investigation Record follows the investigation of an honest magistrate in the corrupt government trying to unravel a sighting of a mysterious glowing giant gourd flying through the sky and the disappearance of an entire village. So far it has been very good.
Silent films are another thing I have been getting more into and Hulu Plus has a good selection of classics there as well. It has been decades since I have seen Nosferatu or Phantom of the Opera and as an adult I think I will appreciate them more.
There has been controversy over the Obama administration issuing waivers to some states in regards to the No Child Left Behind standards. For once, I agree with them on something. The program has done nothing to really improve public education despite having noble intentions. As it is, I suspect we are drifting toward the Japanese model of having private schools as the only way up and out, with public schooling being a death knell to one’s prospects. That is in the very long term, unless the coming economic collapse hastens things. Our systemic education issues will not be resolved through the government, I am afraid.
I am not sure how I feel about Smith Brothers Warm Apple Pie throat drops. If it were not for the cinnamon bits in them, they probably would be disgusting. As it is, they serve to remind me how much I like cinnamon.
One has to love translations from one language to another and the misunderstandings that can be involved. In this case, I just opened a booklet to a multimedia device and the second thing listed under notes says:
Avoid strong beat and collision.
But what if I want to put some techno on it?
My father and I went to the local Republican precinct caucuses tonight and I noticed that the local high school had put up signs directing the two parties to their assigned rooms. Both signs spelled caucus as “causus” much to my amusement and despair. Boy, public education is really working out well, is it not?
In a somewhat more serious vein, it was a fairly mellow caucus with only a little bit of angry debate on resolutions. Normally there is much more than what occurred. Rick Santorum was the big winner in our part of Houston County and it was not even close. This was no surprise and went the way I expected.
I will admit I was one of two “Other” votes, for I wrote in Sweet Meteor of Death aka (SMOD) to register my extreme lack of motivation/approval/endorsement of the remaining candidates. It really looks like the GOP is determined to assist in the Obama re-election efforts in every way possible and I am very weary of it.
Check out The New York Times article via Instapundit for the details.
Quotes that indicate something good may have come out of this fiasco:
The events of the past couple of years, though disheartening to chronic fatigue syndrome patients, may have a silver lining: Research into the disease, much of it privately financed, is ratcheting up.
and
“The disease had languished in the background at N.I.H. and C.D.C., and other scientists had not been paying much attention to it,” said John Coffin, a professor of molecular biology at Tufts University. “This has brought it back into attention.”
Dr. Coffin, who at first supported the mouse retrovirus theory but later disputed it, noted that the illness “does seem to have characteristics that would suggest infectious origins” and that other retroviruses could be involved.
It has been a bleak thing waiting for medical science to come up with anything to deal with the illness and I stopped holding my breath for even a treatment a long time ago. It is one of many things that caused me to lose what little faith I had left in government organizations to solve problems, but only one. My hopes are that the private sector’s ability to innovate will eventually pay off though I doubt it will be in my lifetime. So little is truly understood about the immune system that the science involved can only be considered to be in its infancy.
The duel between Ichigo Kurosaki and Uryu Ishida is finally resolved in an episode dominated by combat. However, more questions are raised than answered as events careen from serious to silly at a frenetic pace. While it may be a conclusion to a small arc, the episode feels like a setup to something bigger.
Bleach is something of a high wire act, with rapid mood swings the norm and events usually threatening to go out of control. Yes, I do believe the word “manic” applies to the series and this episode in particular. The last Quincy, Uryu brings out the worst in substitute Soul Reaper Ichigo and vice versa with an entertaining mess being the result.
One of the more interesting chapters in the Intellectual Property (IP) wars was the takedown attempt of the Pirate Bay website. While Sweden sent the creators of the site to prison, it did not really end the site. Conspiracy theories abounded about the Unites States government being involved and now it has proven to be true. It is interesting material for those fascinated by IP laws getting out of hand, but there was a talkback post by an anonymous person that lays out the real reason this is going on. Read the whole post, but this is the best paragraph:
The drive is to twist the world into accepting intellectual property as if it were something tangible. The US pushes this hard because it is the only thing they have left. The idea is not to own the methods of production, but to own the instructions for the methods of production, and make others pay for using the instructions.
In a nutshell, that is exactly the situation and why Hollywood has disproportionate say in Washington, D.C. When NAFTA was passed back in the 1990’s, it was the beginning of the end for American manufacturing and, in my opinion, nation security/stability. What we are seeing today is the final result of believing in getting money for nothing.
And that is not going to end well.
The FBI has a new flyer out suggesting people watch other Web users at internet cafes. If this isn’t playing Big Brother, I do not know what is. The vague definitions of what you should watch for cover a wide range of legitimate behaviors. For some reason I no longer mock people complaining about a growing police state.
Sigh.
Found at DSL Reports forums.
Over the past couple of years, my book reading has dropped like an ACME balloon launched by Wile E. Coyote over the precipice of a cliff. Since late December, I have taken steps to rectify the situation. Step one actually predates that and was the result of my realizing just how many books I had started without finishing them. So no more reading multiple books at once!
Step two was lining up the started ones and knocking them off, except I ended up inserting Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom at the top of the order. So much for that part of the plan. It has turned out to be a compelling read that is also dryly technical, oddly enough. If I did not have so very many books to read I would get the rest of his writings.
Next up will be finishing The Confessions of Saint Augustine. It will be more of a chore, since I find him to be a rather dull writer. While autobiographies are narcissistic by definition, there is a tendency to be pedantic in this book. But I will persevere.
After that I will be inserting a gift from my paternal aunt and uncle, Founders by Ray Raphael. Little did they know it, but accounts by and of forgotten players and everyday people involved in the Revolutionary War are my favorite parts of history from the period. I am looking forward to it a great deal and it will spur me to finish The Confessions.
Following it I will finish The Histories by Herodotus, which I started years ago. Yes, it is the book that gave the name to accounts of the past and I find Herodotus to be an entertaining author.
On the spiritual side of reading, I am keeping up with at least two pages of scripture a day along with the King James version of The Apocrypha. So far I have not found much of value in the latter, but I have only begun Esdras II. I finished The Old Testament straight read through in January after many years of nibbling at it. It doesn’t get the attention it deserves these days and I think many a Christian would benefit from reading every book contained in it – as would anyone trying to understand Western law.
The more I look at my bookshelves the more I believe a Kindle would not be a good thing for me to get. Maybe when I finish off every book I own, but they will have to come up with a way to extend my lifespan for that to work out!
It is with great reluctance that I have come to the conclusion that my Dell Axim’s days are numbered, simply because it is a very out of date platform. It cannot be upgraded to Windows Mobile 6 and the future is Android and iOS with their associated formats. Being cheap and hostile toward Apple, the iPad is not an option which limits my choices to something Android flavored.
But the big debate I am having with myself is whether to go for something with more functionality or with something that has an eInk display. I would love to be able to read in sunlight, but I also want to be able to keep contacts and appointments with me along with note taking. That would be more along the lines of getting a tablet than a reader.
While the Kindle Fire is pretty much a stripped down tablet, the lack of standard Android apps is an issue. Asus is coming out with a Tegra 3 quad core based tablet for $250 later this year and I wonder if that would be a better solution. I should mention that smaller is better and 6-7” screens are the desired size range.
I think I will bug one of my friends who got the Fire for Christmas and find out more about its capabilities.
Sitting here at home, I am only slightly annoyed about not being able to go to church today. Mainly that is because I am so tired I would not remember anything heard there anyway. Last night was worse as the week caught up to me at last.
After Tuesday’s very early expedition to retrieve the car from Madison, I was out of commission that afternoon through Wednesday. To my relief, I was able to handle another early morning expedition up to the St. Paul Temple on Thursday – only because I was not driving either way. It was very good to get to the temple again and get a well needed spiritual recharge.
Once again, I fell apart afterward and spent Friday being completely brain dead. Saturday was not much better though a test run out to see how I was doing and meet with Congressional District 1 candidate Mike Parry in Winona went well. I like his stances and hopefully he will get the GOP nomination. Politics will begin in earnest next month after everyone finds out what districts they will be in.
Unfortunately, that trip out exhausted the last reserves of energy I had. Last night was not fun because I hit that nasty little area of fatigue where I cannot sleep but am unable to do anything else too. Not even watching movies or television is possible when I get there and an attempt to watch Star Wars failed abysmally.
At the moment, I am listening to Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky soundtrack and for some reason it fits the mood I am in. When I am tired, I tend to get very grouchy and that would be how I am feeling. There is no reason to be and no target for my annoyance other than all of existence. At least I am not being discriminatory.
It is time I replaced the ancient cassettes of Der fliegende Holländer with MP3’s. The quality of Amazon’s downloads has gotten quite good and while I still prefer CD (or better), I can afford this version of it a lot more easily. According to serious opera buffs, this is the performance to have. Tomorrow I’ll purchase it, since it is the Sabbath and I do not shop on it.
I may have to do a full review of the Samsung BD-5700 Blu-ray player. I only have two features yet to try out, but it has been a terrific buy. Upscaling has lived up to its good reputation and animated material is my torture test for that. Hard contrast and lots of straight lines will show every flaw when resampled to bigger resolutions. DVD’s of Studio Ghibli films and Bleach were my choices, since the latter was not optimized for progressive scan widescreen TV’s. Both look fantastic to my surprise since I was prepared for a quality hit with Season 1 of Bleach.
A tiny USB flash drive will be ordered to enable Blu-ray live and see what that is all about. Also, I will enable my Hulu Plus account to see how well that works. Using set top boxes and Blu-ray players to access the Net still seems like a silly way to do things. My media center PC is a much better solution using dated components, but I can see price being an issue for people who have no technical expertise (or spare parts).
UPDATE September 4, 2018
More DMCA take downs have hit the blog despite screen captures long being considered fair use. Due to my not being able to afford a lawyer, I have no choice but to remove them or have the blog suspended. Only the words will be left.
TVTokyo is proving to be foolishly draconian in targeting posts meant to get people interested in seeing the Squid Girl anime and perhaps even purchasing it on DVD or Blu-ray. Being anti-piracy myself this is infuriating that they are targeting posts I wrote hoping to encourage people to try out a delightful show.
Squid Girl faces a serious illness, discovers a new ability, and discovers the wonders of umbrellas in an uneven entry in the comedy series. While first two segments are a mixed bag, the third story redeems the episode with one of the more charming stories of the series.
Who’s a Sick Cephalopod?
Having tentacles would be very handy in my opinion, especially if they were as capable as Squid Girl’s. However, I could see them getting hurt in all sorts of accidental ways. But having one get caught in an ice shaving machine was not one I could imagine.
When a dazed and muted Ika Musame starts shaving one of her tentacle tips off and doesn’t notice, Eiko becomes concerned. Looking flushed, everybody’s favorite inkvader appears to have come down with something. Funny, I was expecting her to look green around the gills, not flushed.
Finding all the suggested ideas from the Aizawa family to be less than helpful, Squid Girl reveals that her illness is something potentially much more serious than thought. Bed ridden, delirious, and desperate her condition spirals downward.
Desperate times require desperate measures as Eiko does her best to help Ika. Help from an unlikely source is forthcoming, but is the cure worse than the illness?
Is That a New Agilllity?
Squid Girl demonstrates a new ability, that of being an art critic when it concerns sand castles. Not impressed with her critique or effort at making a better one, Takeru’s friend mocks her back and points out she has weird things on the sides of her hat. Yep, we have arrived at third grade humor here.
Only just realizing she has fins on her head makes the anthropomorphic squid wonder what they are for – especially once they start twitching. Calling in outside experts to help her figure it out, i.e. her immediate friends, is once again not very helpful.
But there are bigger fish to fry when the dad of Takeru’s friend shows up to do battle over sandcastle building. Inexplicable power ups, cheating, and more art critiques follow.
Shouldn’t You Jet an Umbrella?
Another rainy day and a need for supplies introduces Squid Girl to the wonders of umbrellas. Fascinated like a little kid, Ika marvels over the mechanisms and different kinds she sees. Smitten with the cheap vinyl umbrella given to her by Eiko, the younger girl cannot resist playing with it.
Left to her own devices while Eiko shops, Ika drifts off into a world of fantasy and fun with her umbrella, Squid Unit 01. Yes, she even names it and decides it is her most useful tool for invasion. As she daydreams about their adventures together, Squid Girl keeps adding names to it such as MK II in spoofs of mecha and other animes. Playing around in the rain never looked like so much fun.
But all good things come to an end…
Thoughts
The first two stories are mildly amusing here and there. I suspect children would find them more amusing. Fans of Sannae will be pleased as she gets a lot of time in both and masochistic slapstick abounds. It is hard to peg anything in a slice of life comedy as filler, but both stories have that aura about them – though they are adapted from the manga.
It is the last story that lingers in the memory and salvages a very uneven episode. Perhaps it is because I can remember how amazing the first umbrella I saw was and how much fun the first retractable one encountered was to play with. In this episode, a pure example of childhood innocence and fun can be found.
That awful crushing sadness of breaking something you love is also beautifully presented. Often it is the first encounter with heartbreak for a young soul and I loved how it was handled. It simply rang true, as did Eiko’s older sister method of dealing with the situation. The growing sense of family relationships between Ika and the Aizawa’s adds much to the show, elevating it to more than just a comedy. That last scene of the two was gently sweet in its humor and rang just the right note.
There seems to be a great deal of celebration over having derailed SOPA and PIPA in the U.S.A., but they are not completely dead yet. In the meantime, ACTA has been passed by the majority of the EU nations. It still has not yet been ratified. That is little comfort, for I suspect it will be ratified easily when the time comes. To get an understanding of why this is a big deal, please check out my earlier posts on it here and here.
Another blow to the free travel of information came when the Supreme Court ruled that works in the public domain can be taken out of that status and copyrighted again. So those of you who have downloaded eBooks and movies in the public domain may end up becoming law breakers in the future. This aggravates the erosion of having limited copyrights and sets them well on the way to perpetuity, despite what Justice Ginsburg wrote.
It is ironic that there is such an effort to stifle the flow of knowledge and creativity in a time when we can finally share such things quickly and easily. Innovation is dying out in large part to actions such as these. Sure it sounds warm and fuzzy to talk about helping families of celebrities who were ripped off by their managers/producers/record labels, but resting on the laurels of those who came before is lazy. In the end, only the big media companies and their puppets in government truly benefit as most copyrights will be held by large corporations, not individuals.
So while a battle has been temporarily won, the war continues. If things keep up the way they are going, a long period of cultural stagnation is ahead for us. I firmly believe that humanity needs to keep striving and creating to advance. To my eyes, we have ceased doing so over the past twenty five years and the momentum generated in the past is fading away. We need some intellectual turmoil and the best way to create that is to ideas, concepts, and collaborations bouncing around like mad. Caging those is a huge mistake.
While Bilbo Baggins got to go on an unexpected journey, the one I embarked on yesterday did give me some warning before hand. It involved a trek to Madison to recover the totaled Subaru Outback and get it back home to attempt repairs. Plans for assistance in driving the car fell through due to miscommunications, which meant I would have to drive the car the entire three hours plus it takes to get home.
Just one problem with that – my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome problems cause me to quickly loose awareness and concentration after about an hour and a half of driving. If I am having a good day, I can stretch that to two hours. Equipped with caffeinated soda and a lot of prayers said before and during, I managed to get home without undue incident. For that, I am supremely grateful.
So today I am barely functioning and this post took over twenty minutes to write. I will say it was not much fun driving the final leg home.
Now we have to tear into the car and see what all will need replacing. While the adjustor condemned the radiator, it appears intact and is functioning without leaking. First up for replacement will be the headlight and hood, with both looking to be major endeavors. That car will not be going anywhere soon.
So after going through my normal routine of to start the day, I decided to check on some of the tech sites to see what effect the Megaupload arrests were having on the online community. While Anonymous continues to make sporadic and ineffective attacks in retaliation, other file services are beginning to react. Filesonic has stopped allowing file sharing altogether, which means users can only upload and download their own files. Slightly less panicked, FileServe has reportedly ended their affiliate program where users were paid when they got others to join the service. As many have already commented, who needs SOPA or PIPA when the U.S. government can already reach out and have people in New Zealand arrested?
While I do not like the ease with which the international arrests were carried out at the behest of Hollywood, it was painfully obvious what these file services were created for. So I do not mourn their passing in the least. Yet I wonder what affect it will have on the legitimate file locker companies? While I am not terribly enthused about cloud based computing in general, I do use Amazon’s cloud service to back up my purchased iTunes and MP3 files. Oh and then there is Steam, which is a cloud like service that I am fond of.
I am feeling some ironic amusement though. If you went through various technology and multimedia forums in the past couple of years, the pro-pirate forces had declared bit torrenting dead and the entire future to be these file locker services. As anyone familiar with how spy and terrorist organizations operate, the easiest ones to roll up and eliminate are the highly centralized ones. That is one reason why they operate in cells. Painting big old targets on yourself is not particularly smart and that is what these companies did.
My suspicions are that we will see the file sharing sites gone or inaccessible from America in the very near future. Torrenting will increase with a move to decentralize magnet links becoming the new standard. All of this reminds me of Spy vs. Spy in Mad Magazine as Hollywood and the recording industry use the U.S. government against the pirates.
Karuho Shiina’s beloved romance manga is adapted into a beautiful anime depicting an outcast girl’s attempts to make friends in high school. When strange feelings stir in her after meeting the most popular boy in class, Sawako finds a whole new world opening before her. But will that world accept a weird looking girl who has little in the way of social skills?
In 2005, a shojo (girl’s) manga (comic book) debuted about a shy girl falling for the most popular boy in school. It is a theme done to death in the genre, but what set Kimi ni Todoke (From Me to You) apart was the execution and attention to detail regarding the characters. Only the second series by author Shiina, it ended up becoming a smash hit and won multiple critics awards. Being a slow moving character piece, it would not have been a surprise if the anime adaptation changed things considerably. Surprisingly faithful, it not only stayed true to the story, but rendered it with such care that it became a thing of beauty.
Contact your local Senator and Congressman to let them know you support free speech on the Web. Allowing web sites to be taken down by the government simply based on a complaint from someone else about copyright violations is ridiculous. The whole idea of the world wide Web is to allow linking to other sites to share information and these bills would jeopardize the very structure of the Internet.
Featuring an impressive group of actors, this dark farce manages to be both satirical and whimsical at the same time. Set in the Victorian era, it is a classic comedy of errors involving a corpse, a box, and an eccentric family by the name of Finsbury. Expect bizarre situations, innocent romance, scheming relatives, bird eggs, and the best butler ever in this very amusing movie resurrected through Warner Bros. Archive’s made on demand DVD service.
Every family has at least one film that somehow becomes a tradition to watch. In my family’s case, one of those films is The Wrong Box, an unfairly obscure comedy from the 1960’s. Long before I ever had a chance to see the movie, I had heard all about it and memorized quotes from it. It would not be until the 1980’s before I got to see it on cable TV. Thankfully, it lived up to the hype from the family!
For years I had looked for it on DVD to no avail. But thanks to Warner Bros., I now have the movie and it is worth the premium price I paid for it. It was a pittance to bring back some cherished family memories. Popping the DVD into the Blu-ray player, I wondered what the quality of the picture would be. To my delight, the very 60’s animated opening credits looked great as John Barry’s whimsical score started and so I settled in to watch this deeply, wrongly funny movie.
Some good news that Eric Cantor has killed the bill in the House after a weekend where the author, Lamar Smith, started backing away from it and the White House came out in opposition. The latter shows what use an election year can be for activists to derail unpopular legislation. I highly doubt this positive outcome would have happened otherwise.
I hope the Senate version dies as well.
Burned out from the weekend, which means it was a good weekend. It is odd living a life that seems to play out as a reverse of most people’s. Most await the weekend to recover from the week and I await the week to recover from the weekend.
Crossword puzzle was longer than my usual, but within acceptable limits. Audiosurf, however, did not go well. Simply cannot concentrate properly and actually had problems keeping my eyes open. Today is also not a good pain day.
For the past week I have moved to using my left thumb to control the game on my Xbox 360 controller in an effort to strengthen it. Since late summer, the thumb has been stiffening and snapping, not just popping and alternates between a dull ache and sharp pain. So far, so good in strengthening it but have miles to go yet. Pain and discomfort have lessoned after seven days with flexibility starting to return.
Crystalized water keeps falling from the sky, blown about in the well chilled air. Between that and the cold water to the bathroom repeatedly freezing, I have to surmise Old Man Winter has decided to pay us a visit. Now if I could only find the adapter I need to plug in the space heater fan to aim down the crawlspace! It has been a mild winter so far and it is no surprise that we are not getting off scot free.
I have been tweaking the layout and features of the blog again. Certain gadgets have recently become available that I think will help people navigate and explore the posts. At least, I hope that is the end result. After over five years of blogging here, I only just discovered how to insert breaks in long posts. Yeah, the feeling of being a real genius completely avoids describing how that made me feel.
Check out the top visited posts on the right hand sidebar. Also now there are a list of the most used tags on my posts. If you want to share a post somewhere else, check out the bottom of each one. Linking it to your Facebook, Twitter, or blog account should be easy now.
Meanwhile, things have moved ahead somewhat on the car. We’ve scraped up enough money to buy it back from the insurance company and now have to figure out how to get it back home since it is now over one hundred miles away. Having depleted all our money on this, it will be a long time before we can buy the needed parts for it and it will be many months before it runs again. But it is the only way we can afford a vehicle, I am sorry to say.
An unexpected movie will be the subject of my next review thanks to a make on demand service that will also be part of the essay. It is one near and dear to the immediate family alive and dead. That last sentence sounds awkward, doesn’t it? It happens when you have a very small family.
Yesterday the last couple of weeks finally caught up to me with a vengeance. The night before I started shutting down physically and Monday I was not up for doing a thing. This is actually a good thing, because of how much I did before hitting the wall and how long it took to do so. Very encouraging, in fact.
At least I got my first Area 88 review up tonight, though it took multiple days to write. It and hopefully another series will be added to my rotation of filler reviews in-between movies and more serious matters. I’m starting to feel like I am getting my feet back under me for the first time since visiting Indiana between Christmas and New Years. That is more than can be said for the GOP presidential contenders not named Romney.
Finally caught the new Sherlock Holmes film featuring Robert Downey, Jr. Well, it is new to me. It was a pleasant surprise and played like an alternate history version of the characters. Nothing brilliant but very entertaining. One odd issue I had with the Netflix DVD was that it was in 16:9 format, not 1.85:1. Flipping through all the TV picture modes and the Blu-ray player settings verified this. Is there a new version of “pan and scan” aka fullscreen on some DVD’s now?
Before the holidays took over, I had started watching Stargate: Atlantis from the pilot on. Only tonight did I remember that and resumed watching my DVDs. It is like watching it for the first time again due to the new HDTV. I found myself marveling at the sets due to the hugely increased picture size. Hard to believe it debuted in 2004 because it has held up very well.
Things are not going well on the car front. Not well at all. The likelihood of getting the Subaru back and attempting to repair it is dwindling, though my father refuses to give up hope. With it being in a salvage yard in Madison, the odds are against it. Not being able to afford getting a used car is just another complication.
Not exactly an auspicious start to the year. Something has to go right eventually.
Adapted from one of the first manga’s to be imported into the United States, this somber and contemplative anime about mercenary pilots fighting in a civil war is not your usual cartoon. While filled with many action sequences, character development dominates the story when a mysterious photo journalist comes to airbase Area 88 within the war torn country of Aslan. Dogfights and death rule the sky while men’s souls are broken under a pitiless sun.
Years ago, Netlix suggested this series to me when I was investigating anime in an attempt to understand some of the teens at my church. It looked silly, but I thought “Hey, why not?” and added it to my queue. When it arrived, I cannot say I was eager to watch it, but there was nothing else to watch so into the DVD player it went.
Opening sequences and themes usually set the mood for an anime series (or live action for that matter) and the techno remix of a Bach fugue that opens this promised a lot of action and excitement. Mission (Fuga) by angels is the name of it and it is pretty good for that kind of thing. Pieces of action flew by in rapid succession and so I expected a Top Gun style series without much depth. Boy was I wrong about that. Very wrong.
It has been awhile since I documented my health issues. Once again, my not liking to write about it caused me to stop.
More tired than usual this week, but somewhat functional and have gotten things done like rebuilding the media center PC and setting up the new home entertainment configuration. Been sneezing a bit from allergies (I think all the dust I kicked up got to me) and crossword puzzles have not been going well this week.
Time for some good news. For the first time I can remember, I did not get sick with an upper respiratory infection during or just after visiting my sister and her family in Indiana. According to them, I was more active than they were used to. The H2O2 therapy is what I am crediting for that. There has been some tightness and “tickle” in the chest, but nothing has come of it. Normally that has gone straight into bronchitis.
The bad news is I need to shed all the weight I probably gained from Chex mix and cookies while there.
I also discovered that keeping the humidity up during the winter has been beneficial, because it was painfully dry in my sister’s house. So the investment in the small humidifier last winter has been a good one.
To combat persistent minor infections on my scalp and elsewhere, I have started using Nizoral shampoo. Time will tell if it helps my deficient immune system fight back. With the internal battle joined by drinking hydrogen peroxide, it is time to hammer and anvil the infections.
Sometimes your cup overfloweth and I am having a hard time getting everything posted I want to post. Which is good news on having content and bad news putting it on virtual paper. Since I will not be going anywhere soon due to no wheels, it will help me keep occupied.
Most of yesterday and today were taken up by home entertainment concerns. The 40” HDTV arrived safely to everyone’s amazement, so a domino effect began. The long awaited rebuild of the media center PC had to be done in order to output to 1080P. Being a true rebuild, blood was shed in order to successfully make things work. Or at least that is my excuse for cutting open my middle finger on the right hand. All I will admit to is that hard drives can be dangerous.
So that was actually a smashing success and my old Palit Radeon 3870 is purring away in a new used case with much better ventilation along with an extra used hard drive to make room for more HD content. Overclocking on the GPU went well. It is not generally realized, but 2d increases in speed when you do that, not just 3D games.
A new Samsung Blu-ray player and assorted cables were mated up with the Westinghouse LD 4055 40” LCD-LED HDTV successfully. None of the problems associated with that specific model have been an issue for me. Specifically, not losing aspect ratios after powering off, but I do have that set to automatic. The dreaded HDMI issues with computer video cards were avoided by getting a DVI to HDMI cable and controlling the overscan from the Catalyst Control Center.
Color control on the set is poor, with only three presets available. Cooler and disabling Dynamic on the picture helped a great deal since the picture is biased toward the red. This was a surprise as I had the impression that LED lit screens leaned toward a bluish cast. Brightness is a wee bit excessive, but not a big issue since we have a very bright living room during daylight hours. If I seem to be complaining, I am not for this has been the fastest to get adjusted TV I have ever dealt with. The default colors are very close to optimal.
One problem may be audio cable related and that is getting the SPDIF coaxial cable to output properly to my decoder. There is a periodic drop out that would be highly annoying if I actually watched broadcast TV. It may not be worth even messing with since I have not yet discovered a local signal with 5.1 audio.
The Samsung BD-5700 Blu-ray player is a gem. It setup easily and found my wifi network without any issues. Upsampling to 1080p from DVD is excellent and audio is stellar. Options to downsample DTS-HD MA to standard DTS are handy, but it unexpectedly turns out my decoder can handle the core DTS signal natively when passed through. That made me very happy, though I would like to have the full audio capabilities working. But that would require new speakers and a receiver anyway.
High definition content looked fantastic on the Westinghouse when I torture tested it with my library, physical and digital. The 1080p turned out to be far better than 720p, which surprised me. Browsing the web and playing videos online has been a real treat with all that desktop real estate. To make things easier to read, DPI has been set to 120 and large type enabled.
Best of all, after some travails I was able to get my old Yamaha region free DVD player to work with the set. While only a progressive scan player, the picture is not horrible and I can still play my foreign DVD’s on it.
Once again I have to thank me sister and brother-in-law for the HDTV. The timing is good since I have no transportation and will be house bound for the most part.
It has been fashionable in multiple circles to believe that China will take over the title of most powerful nation during this century. Much has been made of their economic growth and of their acquiring companies, land, and ports in other countries. This has presented an impression of an unstoppable juggernaut backed by the reality that they have become the main manufacturer of goods in the world. But does this mean China is ready or able to take over the lead?
I do not think so. Despite their growing military aggression in Asia, there are cracks appearing. With protests sporadically appearing in different regions, the specter of civil unrest has cast a long shadow across the very large country. In December, the village of Wukan rose up against land seizures and managed to make international news. That inspired another uprising in the nearby city of Haimen despite knowing they would be beaten by police.
It is no wonder that the authorities are spooked for they have witnessed successful uprisings in Arab countries this past year. They too sit on a powder keg of poor and oppressed citizens. But what is interesting to me is that the latest uprisings are in in southern China, which is supposed to be the wealthy part of the nation.
Another intriguing tidbit of information is that the wealthy are looking to escape the country in the future. From other things I have read, there is a sense of fear that another peasant rebellion could happen. So we have the wealthy prepared to pull the handle on their personal ejection seats at the first sign of serious unrest.
So when President Hu wrote a piece saying that China is under cultural attack from the West and then the government restricts television broadcasts in order to present a more pure socialist message it made my antenna go up. This strikes me as being both a reaction to domestic control problems and preparations for conflict. The latter could be internal or external, with the latter being of particular concern to me.
It is not unknown for nations to attack others to bleed off internal pressures that have become too difficult to regulate. However, this may not be the conventional bombing or invading of another country kind of attack. The communists running China have been orchestrating cyber attacks on other countries for years. Asymmetric warfare is at the heart of Chinese military planning, being a theory of fighting a foe who is more powerful by using unconventional means. Right now, that means using cyber warfare against America.
Frankly, I do not think that will do a thing to vent social pressures at home. So the odds of an open confrontation with the United States to whip up patriotic fervor are increasing. While the OWS idiots focused on the spurious one percent here, the income disparities in China make us look well balanced by comparison.
With a housing bubble bigger than the one that popped here and a massive population that are truly dirt poor, China has problems too big to easily fix no matter how much state control is imposed. Actually, state control rarely fixes problems and just breeds more from what I have seen. Aggravating this is how they are driving out Western companies and nationalizing companies again. Wealth and power are being consolidated in the hands of an elite few, as is typical with socialist systems. It is sadly reminiscent of Orwell’s Animal Farm.
With Europe and the United States poised for even worse financial problems in 2012, China will become even more unstable as the buyers for their manufactured goods dry up. November and December saw drops in manufacturing there, so those ballyhooing increased manufacturing in the States should take a reality check, stat. Demand is still not coming back. The fact that Hu and company think that the US is deliberately taking economic hits to undermine them financially does not help things either.
An unstable China will be prone to doing things that would be out of character for them in recent decades. People in the West have forgotten the China that invaded their neighbors Vietnam and India. Suffice it to say, nobody in the region has though. There is quite a military build up going on throughout Asia right now due to Chinese naval aggression at sea.
I would like to be a fly on the wall in some of the intelligence briefings in the region. Even the cash strapped Philippines government is looking to get F-16 fighter jets because of what has been going on.
It is going to be an interesting year.
So this 2012 thing looks new and shiny doesn’t it? Wait, don’t rub that finish! Ah… errr, that isn’t rust under there, that’s primer! New finishes are fragile, don’t ya know…
It funny how we use arbitrary dates and magically thinks that they change things. While it is a good system to sort events out, there is nothing real about the change of a date. Things of the world still progress in their own way, ignorant of things such as calendars, appointments, and dates. It is the balance to humans living chained to clocks, calendars, and schedules while being ignorant of most of what else is going on outside of their lives.
December was a strange month ending an odd year. Losing the car to a deer and being essentially stranded here for the foreseeable future is not making me a happy camper. So the trip to visit my sister and her family in Indiana via Amtrak became a welcome respite from dealing with that mess. A mess that is still unresolved with documents promised from the insurance adjuster nowhere in sight.
The big news is my sister is pregnant and that is going to bring quite a few changes to that household. It will be interesting to see how the twins handle a new half-sister come late summer. Meanwhile, forget morning sickness, my sister has all day and night sickness. Not fun in the slightest and I hope she has an easier time of it as the pregnancy progresses.
Rare is it when I can be surprised by something and that goes doubly so for gifts. So when I spotted the huge wrapped box in the living room of their house, the thought that they might give me a Kindle evaporated. Surely that could not be an HDTV?
Of course it was. Just one little problem… how to get it home? Having ridden there on the train, I was sure it would not be allowed on as cargo. After verifying that, it ended up being shipped UPS with no possibility of insurance. So we will have a new TV if it survives shipping. Given the way things have gone of late, maybe I should not have ordered the Blu-ray player to be its companion. We will see.
My other gifts were socks (yes, I requested socks for Christmas – deal with it), pajamas (what, am I six again?), and a replica of my favorite Harry Potter character’s wand (Neville will always be the real hero of the story to me).
Speaking of unsung heroes, Bob Anderson died. I have always appreciated great swordsmanship and never have gotten to see the real masters names who have been on the silver screen. Reclaiming the Blade goes on my Netflix cue ASAP.
Back on topic, whatever that was. Let me look…
Okay, the visit went well, no lives were lost and no animals killed or maimed in the process – despite being highly tempted. Their tiger cat, Teddy, has a compulsive tendency to micturate on our belongings and my laptop bag was the latest victim. Last time it was my father’s papers from a project he was working on.
Forced cat holding session begun.
Forced cat holding session ended.
My white cat Snooky is always demanding. Being gone for a week has aggravated her a great deal, so I am expected to hold her. Perpetually. Not gonna happen.
So back to the visit. Many a game was played and I won an unnaturally large amount of them. Typifying the mayhem, I won the final Sorry game by coming from behind with my brother-in-law and father with all their pawns in or in the safe zone. Given I was unable to even get on the board for the first go through of the cars, it was quite amazing. But I have to say my two victories in Apples to Apples were the real high point. There is nothing quite as satisfying as using people’s prejudices against them.
Forced cat holding session begun.
Forced cat holding session ended.
Good thing this post isn’t about a subject.
In the mailbox when I got home were the Pro Ana red/blue 3D glasses I had found on Amazon. They are acrylic with plastic frames and will be much harder to lose than the paper and gel kind. Experiments with them and PowerDVD 11 have been intriguing. As I suspected, the latest version of Star Trek converted very well to 3D. The way that film was shot lends itself to being turned into 3D and I have more experiments to perform. Sadly, I cannot put up any images because there is no way around the copy protection used by the program.
There are issues with everything getting darker and colors being somewhat off. Anything intensely red or blue becomes electric and skin tones yellow are the worst of it. Also fascinating is the ability to apply this conversion to still photos. What really surprised me is how useful this may turn out to model building. With depth I can better make out some of the subtle to complex bumps and lumps on aircraft walkarounds. So this may be something useful after all.
One fun thing about them is I can browse the various anaglyphic images on the web. Not bad for 17 cents and $2.98 shipping!
I was going to write about the experiences on the train trips, but enough rambling for now. That can be materiel for another post.
As 2011 gasps its last breaths, it is either a time to review the year that has been or look forward to the year that will be. Given the year that was for me, I am choosing the latter. So the assignment I have given myself is to think about things to look forward to.
While 2011 had some good movies to go to and I actually attended more than I usually do, 2012 is shaping up to be a very interesting time at the theater. The Dark Knight Rises, The Avengers, and Prometheus all look entertaining if not excellent. But the one really making me eager to see is the first of The Hobbit movies. Aggravating that is the trailer that was released this month:
Looks fantastic, doesn’t it? The final moments of the trailer raised goosebumps for me. It is hard to believe it is ten years from when Fellowship of the Ring came out.
Come to think of it, watching the Blu-rays of the Extended Editions is another thing to look forward to. My sister and her husband have given us a 40” 1080P 120 MHz LED LCD HDTV for Christmas. This unexpected addition to the living room has prompted me to raid the money I was saving for a new PC monitor and get a decent Blu-ray player for the set. Just one catch and that is getting it to Minnesota from Indiana.
At least by the time it gets shipped home all the needed cables and gear should have arrived in time. New gear means new cables. At least I will still be able to hook up my region free Yamaha DVD player to the new set. Time to rebuild the media center PC too and add an older HD compatible video card I have to it.
I just hope I do not break anything setting it up. A gift to my step nephew lasted only a couple of minutes after giving it to him. Warning him not to overstretch the toy resulted in one broken toy thirty seconds later. Maybe I should not have warned him…
It appears I have inadvertently created a couple of Bleach fans with the step nephew and niece. They especially like Rukia after seeing several episodes, so they show some good taste there.
The big news is that my sister is pregnant. Irony runs strong in the family, so it is no surprise that this happened unexpectedly after many previous travails trying to conceive. Welcome news, indeed.
While trying to maintain a positive attitude about next year, I cannot say I am looking forward to the political and economic aspects. The only description I can muster for it without sounding apocalyptic is the word “meatgrinder.” If that is one word, that is.
One thing I will not be doing is a New Year’s resolution. I am too busy trying to do everything I can to improve my health to add something on top of it. Also, last year’s one of finding a gal was a total fiasco, so avoiding the irritation of failing to keep a new one is a bonus. All hope has been lost on that anyway.
Here is to hoping something can be done about our transportation problems.
In the face of the ridiculous costs of bodywork, the still running Subaru has been totaled by the car insurance company. Sadly, there is no way we can afford to replace it with a vehicle that has even a fraction of its capabilities and things are an absolute mess on the transportation side of life.
The Subaru was the best car we ever had and ever will have. It could handle any weather, slippery hills, and long distance travel with excellent handling and comfort. A trip to New Foundland proved what a wonderful traveling car it was and i have fond memories of driving it through Canada.
Deer were cruel to it and there were other minor accidents, so it was an unlucky vehicle over the years. The first day we had it in December of 2004, I hit ice pulling into a business and put the car through a garage door. I should have known then something bad would happen to it in the end just from that unfortunate beginning.
Now we are faced with a serious problem of no wheels and not being able to afford what we really need living out in the sticks. The ever treacherous driveway makes ascending it very tricky on anything other than a 4WD or AWD during the winter.
This did not help with my improving on feeling the Christmas spirit. I am set on getting a 12 gauge by next deer season.
It is going to be a quiet one here, but I hope others have a lively one with their families. With nothing profound to say this year, I can only suggest that you remember to forgive one another and fill your hearts with love. This is what it is supposed to be about and why the Savior was born.
To those who do not believe, I advise the same nonetheless. Forgiveness and love make life much better in my experience. I think you will find the same if you practice it.
So a merry Christmas to all on this quiet eve!
A simple 25 minute film featuring Jimmy Stewart as a lonely old man on Christmas Eve became something of a classic amongst Latter-day Saints after its 1980 release. While marking a shift in outreach to the public from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its importance is more than that. It is the simple message at the end that says it all about the holiday.
I had originally planned to review something completely different for Christmas, but was hit by a moment of inspiration. Having had difficulty getting into the feeling of the season, I realized it had been a few years since I last watched this. So along with purchasing Christmas with the Rat Pack from Amazon’s MP3 service, it was time to make an active effort. By the way, I’m listening to that superb compilation while writing this review.
Mr. Krueger’s Christmas begins with the title character working as a custodian of an apartment building. It being Christmas Eve, he sets out for a tree to put up in his basement apartment. Attempts to interact with people on the street are ignored or barely acknowledged. It is cold outside in more ways than one.
Along the way, he looks at a suit in a shop window, much like a child looking at toys would. In no time he is lost in a fantasy of being fitted with a new suit and being treated like a man of status. It is only the beginning of fantasies which Willie Krueger succumbs to out of loneliness.
It was something of a surprise to get an email from a friend linking a post on Glenn Beck’s site, The Blaze and asking if this was the local issue a mutual friend was involved in. Sure enough, it is all about the land rights fight here in Houston County.
The money quote from Bjerke in the article is no surprise. Beyond his left wing politics, this is business as usual for the county commissioners regardless of political affiliation. Dictatorial is a common adjective thrown at them in this area and is the norm in most rural counties.
But now some comments on the issue at hand. In a nutshell, Houston County doesn’t want residences increasing in land areas zoned for agriculture. The theory is city folk will come in and destroy the area if they are allowed to build homes here. So to restrict building, only one house per 40 acres is allowed.
That is very restrictive, especially for families that want to keep farms in the family and have the next generation build their own house on the family homestead. A neighboring county, Fillmore, is worse from what I have been told. There are areas zoned where it is something like 120 acres that the same kind of ordinance is applied to.
Something that needs pointing out is Houston County’s population has been declining for years. All this talk of bringing in manufacturing companies is moot if there isn’t a population to supply the labor force. You also need the population to make up for lost tax revenues given out as tax breaks to said companies. So limiting population growth in any way is foolish.
Having been approached years ago to possibly be the spokesman for the group that was forming to fight this, I declined. While sympathetic and thinking they are in the right, I had some issues with using the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of the “pursuit of happiness” as a basis for fighting the zoning law. Land rights is one place the founding fathers botched things. With no explicit land rights expressed in the document or its amendments, it left things wide open for abuse. This is curious due to the amount of writings about those rights before the Constitution was created.
In the end, I believe an amendment to the state constitution is needed and then a push for an amendment on the national level. Nothing less will solve this problem completely and safeguard our rights to land ownership and stewardship.
What goes unmentioned in the post on The Blaze is that there is an element of religious intolerance, if not persecution, involved in this dispute. The original case was fought by a family belonging to a tiny Christian sect called the Marinathas. Outside of mainstream Christianity to some degree, they have been the objects of rumor mongering and ridicule by outsiders.
The rumors that were spread by supporters of the commissioners went something like this: they want to build a cult compound like Jamestown so they can gather people together and take over the area. Needless to say, this did not help the atmosphere. From my dealings with members of the sect, I have found them to be very good, God fearing, and patriotic people. Being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I can sympathize about being misunderstood.
I will admit that the family involved in the case were far too hot headed in the way they initially handled things. While they thought they had been given a verbal agreement, you have to have something written when dealing with government. Otherwise misunderstandings can and will arise like it did in this case.
But the fight rapidly grew to include many people outside the Marinathas and there is quite a cross section of concerned citiziens in Concerned Landowners. It has become quite the brouhaha and the commissioners are finding themselves in contested elections now. It will be interesting to see how the national attention affects things in this small rural county.
As for the media censorship of letters to the editor, this is normal and there is no such thing as an impartial newspaper. I do think Heather Gray went overboard on banning all letters on the subject, but The Spring Grove Herald is a DFL aligned newspaper so do not expect an even break there. Instead, mourn the fact that no conservative has been willing to throw money away at a dying medium to counter liberal papers. Actually, the biggest issue is that Gray was mayor and editor at the same time. That was a big conflict of interest that reminded me of Charles Foster Kane’s desires to control everything, albeit on a microscopic scale.
I hope that the battle for property rights gets some results, but I am not holding my breath. Once entrenched, laws are nearly impossible to repeal.
Updating a rather ridiculous giant monster series that featured a flying and fire breathing turtle does not sound like a recipe for success. But this surprisingly entertaining film almost convinces you that a turtle could fly. While a mixed bag, it shows the potential that the trilogy eventually grows into. Time for giant monster destruction as Tokyo gets hammered yet again! UPDATED for extras coverage.
The popular Gamera series of giant turtle kids movies from the 1960’s and 70’s did not get an auspicious start with Gamera the Invincible. It was an obvious attempt to cash in on Toho Studios successful Godzilla franchise on an even lower budget. It had none of the gravitas or coherency of the contemporary Godzilla films, much less that of Gojira which started the whole thing. The movies got weirder and more juvenile as the years went on.
So when a director named Shusuke Kaneko was given the green light to restart the defunct property, there was not a huge amount of excitement from what I remember. It did not help that his resume was filled with cheap exploitation flicks filled with the late night cable fare of sex and violence. The idea he could update a kiddie movie and make a hit out of it was far fetched. Even more far fetched would be for it to be critically acclaimed.
In my previous post, I mentioned my father hit a deer yesterday -- after we finally go the brakes repaired on the car. Talking to him, he did not even get a chance to brake, which is just like the deer in 2007. There are too many of the hooved vermin in the area and the DNR has allowed things to get out of control. A couple of years of year round open season might be enough to manage the population, but I think it will require government culling. That will never happen here in Minnesota thanks to Bambi lovers in the cities.
As you can see, the front driver’s side took the hit this time. The license plate holder/protector I got to defend against kamikaze pheasant attacks did its job and only the top rim remains.
There is deer hair everywhere. At least the radiator appears undamaged; the 2007 hit destroyed it. The headlight is a complete loss.
The door had to be completely replaced when a buck ran into it in 2008. Now the new one is banged up. Looking at the car from the side shows how violent the collision was. Yet it is not enough to set off the airbags to my amazement.
As bad as it looks, the collision in 2007 was worse:
Not a good way to go into Christmas.
At least that was my reaction to today. After having a good week, it figures something bad was coming. The car that finally got its brakes fixed in time for me to go to church on Sunday is now out of commission. My father hit a deer and crumpled the front end again and the shattered the left side headlights. There is simply no winning right now.
I’ll post photos tomorrow after I take them. For some reason I am feeling motivated to get a 12 gauge shotgun for next deer season…
I had plans made for the week that are all now impossible, so it is time to be a shut in again. Loss of transportation equals loss of life to poor rural folks and is something hard to explain if you aren’t experiencing it yourself.
Now I don’t have any excuse for not posting, drat it.
So one giant monster movie review is coming. The monster is giant, not the review. After that, I should do something for Christmas, shouldn’t I?
The oppressive dictator of North Korea has escaped mortal justice and now the jockeying for power in the communist country begins in earnest. It is not surprising to see the markets in Asia going down out of fears of instability. One can only pray this offers a flicker of hope for the North Korean people.
It is difficult not to contrast his “accomplishments” in contrast to those of another leader who just died, Vaclav Havel. One died while clinging to power by starving his own people and the other died after having helped usher his country into democracy. If only there could be a Velvet Revolution on the Korean Peninsula, but I am afraid that is highly unlikely.
This week has zoomed by. Perhaps that has been a penalty for things going better. We humans have a tendency to remember and dwell on the negative more than the positive, so time appears to fly when things go well.
Late last night I updated the Summer Wars review. While changing it to include the Blu-ray version, I found way too many errors that slipped past me when I originally posted it. Very annoying, especially the misspellings of names. Repeat viewings of the movie only make me fonder of it and have now led me to buy a deck of hanafuda cards off of eBay today.
An attempt to get a microphone working with my Asus Xonar D1 audio card failed miserably. The best I could get out of it was static humming through the subwoofer no matter what I did. It is the one flaw of the card that if you do not have a front panel hooked up to it you have to use the SPDIF/Line In/Microphone jack in back. Way too many functions assigned to the hybrid 3.5mm and optical jack. So it looks like a USB microphone is a must buy.
On a brighter note, I have found obsolete CPU’s for my living room multimedia center have gone down in price online. It will be possible to put a faster processor in there after all. No hurry though, it will be awhile before there is a HDTV to hook up to it.
The brakes have finally been replaced on the car with only a concern about brake line pressure. It is a minor thing that can be rectified if it doesn’t resolve on its own. It will be nice to have some freedom to get about again.
It still amuses me that Bleach and Citizen Kane are the two most heavily trafficked posts on the blog. Quite a contrast, eh? I blame the two animated gifs that became Internet memes.
Feeling the tired beyond my normal tired today. That means watching some giant Japanese monsters beat on each other is in order.
This has been a good week so far and it is Wednesday already so that means the majority of it has been good. It has been awhile since I could say that.
Sunday I got a ride to church and hung out with a young friend of mine and his girlfriend as we got his fancy new Onkyo home theater system to play nice with his new PC. A spare optical cable I had lying around turned out to be key in getting the signal out to the receiver. The Phillip's one he bought at Wal-Mart refused to convey a proper signal, so we decided it was probably defective.
Monday I bought an upgrade to the Cyberlink PowerDVD player that came with my Blu-ray drive since I was liking what it was capable of but wanted more features. PowerDVD 11 Ultra is a very nice upgrade and I am currently playing with its TrueTheater HD upscaling versus the capable ATI Avivo of my videocard. Depending on the video, it seams to do a better job when the content is of lower quality. More testing is needed before I can conclusively say more, but it is promising. It is now my go to video player for all formats.
Sorry, VLC – you have really fallen by the wayside of late.
That cheap optical cable I mentioned before? Well, shockingly it turned out to work with the Razer Barracuda soundcard on my living room multimedia center PC I built with leftover parts a couple of years ago. Dolby Digital Live and DTS Interactive sound fantastic coming out of it, which breathes new life into streaming content from Hulu, YouTube, Crackle, and other places on the Web. All I can surmise is that the Barracuda pumps out more light than the Asus Xonar D1.
Tuesday my father and I had lunch with a friend from out neighboring county in Houston at the Crossroads Cafe and caught up on politics. I also encountered an amazing hashbrown omelet that was not only huge but had everything wrapped in the hashbrowns. I am still digesting it a day later.
Today we ate at the same place when we met with our State Representative, Greg Davids. It is going to be a strange election year for many reasons, but redistricting due to the census makes it weirder than usual. We do not know for sure where the districts will be until the courts rule on them. Hopefully, they will be more logical than the last court imposed ones from 2000. Odds are that I will be in the same district as Greg, but the state senate is another question. I will hate to lose Jeremy Miller as my senator if it goes the way I suspect, but that’s life.
Now for something more sobering. I have to agree with Glenn Reynolds last sentence. These are fast becoming perilous times when you cannot trust the election process anymore.
Over in Belgium a mass shooting took place that got next to no attention here in the States. So far it appears the shooter being a drug dealer about to go to prison again is the motivation, despite his Moroccan origins. The fact he was not a practicing Muslim indicates it wasn’t sudden jihad syndrome, but why did he have grenades and 9500 gun parts? It makes me suspect he dealt illegal weapons on the side to other drug dealers and criminals. Even the craziest of gun nuts do not have that many parts lying around.
In my opinion, Europe is slowing losing control to criminals due to their pervasive statism and gun control laws. Look how well those laws worked with a convict having possession of that kind of arsenal. There is always a way for criminals to arm themselves – always.
My prayers go out to those wounded and the loved ones of those killed.
