Remote over-load

As a home theater/technology geek, I find myself with a little bit of remote control over-load these days. In a basket sitting next to me on my couch I have no less than five remotes controlling things ranging from my television to my TiVo and a few other components. Of course I need all the remotes because no cheap universal remote would do the job right.

That’s why I’m drolling over the Harmony remotes by Logitech. The nice thing about the Harmony line is they are customizable and have tasks. Want to watch a movie? The remote can turn your TV on, turn it to the correct input, turn on the receiver, turn on the DVD player and all the buttons work for what you want them to do without punching anything else in.

The problem is - they run around $100 or more. So at the moment, I’m going to continue drolling over the prospect of buying one in the new year when I have some more spending money. Until then, I continue to play the remote control shuffle.

Smallville: Season One

When “Smallville” premiered in October 2001 I was somewhat skeptical about this show centered around a young Clark Kent. It aired on The WB, replacing my then favorite show “Roswell” which had a very similar premise. While “Roswell” would make a return for its third season on another network, it was up against the new Superman themed “Smallville.”

While I was set up to dislike “Smallville” for bumping, and ultimately killing “Roswell,” in the ratings, I couldn’t help but have a healthy interest in the show. It was about a young Superman after all, and being my favorite comic superhero, I wanted to check it out. While I was watching “Roswell,” a friend taped episodes of “Smallville” for me.

I liked what I saw, but after a few weeks the show began to develop a formula. We would joke about the “freak of the week” story lines that began to develop. After about 8 episodes I slowly lost track of the show and gave up trying to follow it.

I would see an episode here and there, but never really got back into it - even after “Roswell” ended its third and final season. I always told myself I would watch “Smallville” when I got the chance.

I’ve been picking up the season sets for the last couple years, whenever they were on sale - never paying more than about $20 a pop.

Over the last few weeks, as the writers strike has begun to effect television, I decided to sit down and watch the first season. Making it through, four episodes at a time, I completed the first season a few days ago and I have to say, the show really grew up quickly.

While the early episodes of the show focused on the freak of the week premise, it quickly evolved and learned from early mistakes. Characters that were once minimal to the over-all story were given a chance to grow and change. The small town of Smallville became a lively location, not just a 5 line explanation of where Clark grew up.

Lex Luther, who in the series at this point is friends with Clark, has signs of his future. You know where he’s going and you can see him going there - but it’s hard not to like him. He’s a good guy at this point, just wanting to do right by his friends, and understand the world he lives in.

I’ll be watching the second season in the coming weeks and will continue to write on my experience with the show. If you haven’t checked it out, I would recommend seeking out the first season. There is a lot of content there that make it worth watching.

Music shopping online

As I continue my adoption of MP3, AAC and my iPod as my primary way of getting to and listening to music, it has become a lot easier to find new music and indulge in some old favorites. For a while now I’ve been using the iTunes story quiet happily. For the most part the good people at Apple have given me a good experience at a relatively reasonable price.

The problem with iTunes is, the majority of the content there is copy protected. Not cool. I like the idea that my music can go with me even if I (God forbid) leave the iPod behind and go to something like the Zune. Not going to happen, but anything is possible I guess.

For the last few weeks I’ve been exploring some alternatives that work with iTunes and my iPod without having to deal with the iTunes Store. First up is the new Amazon.com offering. A nifty service linked right into Amazon.com. Through it I have been able to get the latest Barenaked Ladies albums at a reasonable price ($7.99 compared to the $9.99 iTunes price). Oh did I mention it’s all unprotected standard MP3? Yeah, it is, it’s awesome.

Of course there is eMusic too. The other service I have jumped on. For $15 a month I get to download 50 tracks a month. Awesome! Well, it’s all indie stuff for the most part, which means a limited selection but I’m amazed what I’ve found. Here is a list of just a few things I’ve downloaded to date. . .

• New Dashboard Confessional, plus some older tracks
• First Elbow album
• John Wolfington’s second album
• Classic Promise Ring material
• The Gomez album from last year
• The 88’s latest

I’ve also found stuff from Motion City Soundtrack, Pedro the Lion, Badly Drawn Boy, Super Furry Animals, Hey Mercedes and others that I plan on downloading over the next few months.

At any rate, the online music world has really opened up over the last few months for me, and it’s making my iPod all excited.

Mouse in the house

About a year and a half ago, my then room mate and I discovered we had a mouse scurrying around the apartment. Not wanting to have rodents running a muck in the place, we quickly purchased some traps with the hope of catching it and setting it free.

Of course, the mouse never took the bait and seemed to have moved onto a new home. We didn’t see it after a few days of running around. Of course I discovered some boxes chewed in and such, but nothing too damaging, just annoying.

This morning I was sitting on the couch, catching up on some new “South Park” on TiVo when I saw something run behind my entertainment center. Registering it as a mouse, I quickly sprung to action, closing doors and picking stuff up - hoping to avoid dealing with it as much as possible - after all, I needed to head into work.

After a few moments I discovered it ran across the room and into the dining room, near the trash can. I grabbed a trap and put in some bait, trying to catch it and get it over with quickly. Finding it behind the trash can, I put the trap near by and nudged the can.

Unfortunately for the mouse, I didn’t realize how much I nudged the can. The small guy was killed.

I’m not someone who enjoys killing animals, I don’t find enjoyment out of the prospect of hunting and such, so I was pretty upset at myself for killing the little thing. I disposed of it outside and moved on with my day.

At any rate, that’s an interesting way to start your morning.

Trying to bring some twitters here

I’ve been using the service “Twitter” off and on for probably a year now. It’s a social network with short SMS style communications that basically allow you to answer the question “what am I up to?”

There are a number of ways to put Twitter to use, including integrating it right into this blog - something I’m in the midst of working on right now. However, Twitter.com seems to be down. Annoying.

Once it’s back up I will hopefully be able to put it into place and get things running, but it does give me pause - maybe this is why it’s a bad idea to rely on outside Web sites. We’ll see.

Update: It seems as though Twitter is live again, so I have fully installed it into the blog. Just look to the right and read the “Currently” entry to see what I’m up to throughout the day.

I support the writers. . .

United Hollywood

It’s getting cold outside

I live in Minnesota and I hate winter. There, I’ve said it. This is no surprise to anyone that knows me, but when the temperatures dip bellow 60 I begin to detest the weather. I like it warm and comfortable.

People often ask me why I live in Minnesota if i hate winter so much. I have to say, because everything else about this state is wonderful. For a good part of the year we have nice green grass, towering fields of grain and a blue sky.

I just have to endure the next 6 months of misery to get to something good again. Sigh.

I’ve picked a side, sort of

I was going to wait to write on this a few more days to let things sink in, and to let me test out a few more things to make a final impression on it, but I’ve just read a few things that make me want to address the whole thing.

On Friday, I plunged into the Hi-Def disc format war. I purchased an HD DVD player. The HD A2 by Toshiba to be precise. Walmart hosted a special secret sale on a few items on Friday and the highlight around the country was the HD A2. I actually didn’t know about the sale when I happened to walk by the display. Stacked on a shelf hidden in the electronics department was four of the A2s with a price tag of under $100.

All I could say after I saw the price was “that’s insane, there is no way that’s real.” Again, not knowing the sale was a one off deal I walked away believing this was the beginning of the end of the hi-def disc battle. I later found out it was a one day only sale.

Let me clear up a few things about the player. The A2 is one of a handful of Toshiba branded players (there are a small number of companies make the HD DVD players these days). Normally the price of the A2 was around $200+, while other HD DVD units can run upwards of $500, if not more.

HD DVD is one of two major high definition video disc formats battling to claim the thrown of the mature and aging DVD. It is rivaled by BluRay, a format championed by Sony and a number of other technology companies and movie studios.

I’ve been planning on staying out of this battle, allowing the two camps to fight it out, but the price of $100 hit me in a special place.

For the last few months I’ve been looking into picking up an upconverting DVD player, that would increase the resolution of my DVD collection and make them look a lot better on my HDTV. Prices for reasonable units was around $150, a price that made me gulp knowing there was a world of ture high definition video coming around the corner.

The HD DVD player serves as an excellent upconverting DVD player. Through the HDMI cable the visuals look stunning. Even DVDs that traditionally looked poor on my television, actually looked pretty sharp and popped like never before.

BluRay players are still really pricey. Coming in over $400, the format is still out of the reach of the average person (meaning me). Until they can come in with a sub-$100 player, they’re phoning in the competition. HD DVD seems to be more aggressive at the hard ware side of things.

Netflix, the online rental place, has backed both formats, allowing users to rent out DVD, HD DVD and BluRay if they so chose. So I have a good flow of HD movies that I want to see.

Two major movie fan Web sites have taken vastly different stances on the format war. Ain’t It Cool News’ head haunco has vocally put his hat in the HD DVD ring. The editors of The Digital Bits, a major DVD site in its own right, are taking a stand behind BluRay - calling it a superior format.

While I have invested in the HD DVD format, I am not sold that it will be the final winner in this war. I can see why BluRay might win. It has more studio support and on paper seems to be selling media at a faster pace than HD DVD. But the price of hard ware, in my opinion the ultimate deciding factor in this war, is leaning towards HD DVD. As more average consumers begin to buy players (whichever ones they do) the winner will become much more clear.

At the moment though, calling either a winner is premature. Both are selling mildly well - a few thousand here and there. Each have around 300 titles to date, with many movies on both formats.

In the end, while I have invested in HD DVD, I’m not calling it the winner. I just wanted a good upconverting DVD player. It just happens to play HD DVDs too. Who could complain about that?

I’ve only had the chance to watch one title in HD DVD, that being the amazing “300.” I have three titles coming from Netflix on Wednesday that I plan on watching rather quickly. After I’ve had some time to take in the true HD experience, I’ll come back with more impressions on the format.

I’m interested in hearing from BluRay owners, how do you like that format? How does it compare to HD DVD.

Run Harry, run!

I spent the better part of today laid out in bed, coughing, sniffling and dealing with what seems to be a minor touch of the flu. As a result I’m not very tired at the moment - but I am feeling better, so there is a trade off.

There have been a few updates in my life over the last few days, I’m saving some of it for a full post in the future, but I can say that I finally finished the first Harry Potter book. It was a read that I picked up over a year ago, but often put it down after only a few chapters. I finally sat down and finished it last week.

I have seen most of the movies of course, but I wanted to read the books as well. In my possession is the first two and sixth book - with plans of picking up the remaining titles.

I really enjoyed the first book, it played out at a brisk pace, giving the reader a good introduction to the world. Having seen the movie, and the next three, I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen, which in some ways was a set back, but also gave me a chance to learn more about the world of witches and wizards (and muggles of course).

The first film followed the book quiet closely, with only a few items changed that I could recognize, so really the need to read wasn’t as strong. I understand further films drift slightly away from the text iterations.

I’m working on a Dan Brown book at the moment, after that I hope to jump into the second Harry Potter book and finish it a lot quicker than a year. I’ve always got a few books going at once, so now we’ll see what else I can read along with Mr. Brown’s fine work.

Feeling the need for a change

I’ve been using this design for a few months and really it’s an edited version of a template I’ve used pretty steadily for a few years now and I would really like to do something different. I have a few ideas sketched out, but it’s going to be a challenge for me. I’ve not had much success in designing a CSS layout, nor experience in doing a floor to ceiling WordPress template.

I am going to give it a shot though. Hopefully I’ll be able to realize my ideas in the near future. I might carve out some time this weekend to educate myself on some code snippets for this. The idea is pretty grand I think, so we’ll see how well I can pull it off.

Wish me luck!

Nov. 5, 2007 - So yeah, I’m kind of putting the idea of a full redesign on hold. I have plenty of other things that are destracting me and I’ve come around again to this design. I’m adding a few tweaks and I’ll be cleaning a few back end items up again. At any rate, this post was rather pointless anyway. I promise I’ll be writing with more substance in the coming days. Look for an interesting home theater post later this week.