02.08.08
Posted in Tech, Video at 6:46 pm by Cavorter
I’ve been running into a huge number of people who don’t understand what’s going on with HDTV lately, so I figured I needed to put something out for the couple of people who do read my blog.
- The HD broadcast switch is a funded federal mandate. (see item #3)
- You do not have to get rid of your existing TV unless you really want to. (see item#3)
- Every household in the US is entitled to two (2) coupons good for free HD to SD content converters. You can get your coupon from https://www.dtv2009.gov/. These are set top boxes that go from a standard pair of rabbit ears or whatever you’re using as an antenna to your TV and let you watch HD content on your regular old non-HD TV.
- You are getting something (two things!) from the government for FREE here people.
- If you plan to continue using a VCR or other SD equipment (Tivo series 1 and 2, Windows MCE, MythTV, etc) to record programming make sure that you get a converter box that can change channels on a schedule or can be controlled by your recording equipment. If your recording equipment has built in schedules of some kind they may not match the new HD lineup and schedule.
- Shop for a new TV carefully. Just because you buy a new “HD capable” TV does not mean you can just hook up an antenna and start getting HD content. Many “HD Capable” TVs sold do not include an HD tuner (though it’s better than it used to be) since for the most part the manufacturer’s figure that you will have either a cable box or satellite receiver that will do the tuning instead. A TV with an HD tuner will likely cost $100-$200 more than an otherwise identical model.
- Not all HD capable TVs are widescreen. Many manufacturers make several “normal” (4:3 aspect ratio) sets that are just as “HD capable” as their widescreen versions.
- Not all HD capable TVs are light and thin. I personally own a ~125lb 30in widescreen CRT that I really quite like except when I decide to move it up or down stairs. CRTs still for the most part look better than other competing technologies. The problem is that, as evidenced by my 125lb wonder of modern technology, the technology does not scale well to really big screens.
- “Plasma” TVs use much more power than a similarly sized CRT. Really big plasma TVs use proportionally more power. My brother heats his living room with his (Not a joke).
- LCD TVs use much less power than a similarly sized CRT. Really big LCD TVs use proportionally more power which may actually be more than your current 27in non-HD TV uses. Do not take the word of the salesman at the store on this one, get a Kill-A-Watt and find out for yourself.
- The biggest downside to many of the non-CRT technologies is that they can be very difficult to see anything when you are not directly in front of them (though it is much better than it was a few years ago). Some sets are much better than others. If the comfy chair is off in a corner you may not be able to watch anything on that big new thing heating the living room. Before you go to the store, figure out where you might end up trying to watch it from in your room and figure out what that distance and angle are and try and replicate it in the store to see what it will look like.
- A 30in widescreen TV has a picture that is about the same size vertically as a 27in “normal” (4:3) TV. Remember that the measurement is diagonal.
- You do not have to have cable or satellite to get local broadcast HD channels. Most satellite receivers get their local HD content from an antenna you hook up to the back of them. Some cable systems don’t display all of the local HD channels.
- Most cable systems highly compress their content so it is very possible that NBC/ABC/CBS/FOX/PBS/CW/etc might look better from an antenna in your area.
- Not all content from HD sources is really HD. There’s quite a bit of programming (especially children’s and daytime programming) that is still displayed in SD. Re-runs of Cheers and Friends will always be in SD. The HD source might make it look a bit better than the old SD signal though.
- Not all stations that are broadcasting in HD are broadcasting HD content at all. Up until Fall of 2007 my local CW affiliate in particular was broadcasting everything in 480P which meant the widescreen dramas (Like Smallville) get shrunk to fit the lower resolution and looked really bad on my widescreen set with black bars on all sides. (Thanks to Aaron for pointing out they had changed over) Still, it is something to watch for in your area, especially on stations that are not affiliated with the big four networks.
That’s all that I can think of right now but if anyone has any questions feel free to ask them. If I don’t know the answer I’m more than willing to look them up.
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01.29.08
Posted in Music at 10:12 pm by Cavorter
The a capella group Duwende has made their recent album “Collective” available for free download. I’m still working my way through the disc, but the four tracks I’ve heard are certainly worth the time if you like original a capella or pop music. (Found via Acapodcast episode #42)
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01.04.08
Posted in Media, Music at 5:38 pm by Cavorter
I listened to Radio Lab’s episode “The Ring and I” over lunch today. It’s all about Wagner’s Ring Cycle and it was really in a lot of ways a completely eye opening listen.
I really like classical/orchestral music but I have a really hard time listening to opera. Actually, I seem to just naturally be pre-disposed to like instrumental music much more than vocal music but while I quite like A Capella music in my personal scale of appreciation of vocal music, opera is somewhere near the bottom. Because of that there is actually quite a bit of really big important pieces of music that I’ve never heard because I can’t quite seem to listen to it.
To put it more succinctly, I’ve never listened to or seen any of Wagner’s operas. I’ve certainly heard bits and pieces here and there but I’ve never listened to any of it in the proper context of the complete work and it’s not something that I’ve ever been particularly happy about but attempts to rectify the situation did not succeed for a host of reasons.
I’ve really been enjoying listening to RadioLab since I heard it mentioned on an episode of This American Life and downloaded an episode. The content is exceedingly interesting and the presentation is amazingly similar to how it sounds in my head sometimes, if it had that much of an audio component anyway. The show’s focus is usually about science, or at least science related topics, so to get a podcast episode that was all about a very particular piece of art was interesting in and off itself.
Now I still haven’t heard or seen any of Wagner’s operas, but I really feel like I understand it a lot better. To be able to bridge that gap and condense such a work into a comprehensible and digestible work is honestly a piece of art in and off itself and really has to be heard to be believed. Amazing work and highly recommended for anyone.
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11.28.07
Posted in Video at 3:03 pm by Cavorter
Looking around for new podcast content this morning I ended up in the Zune Marketplace and found Minnesota Stories which is cool but sadly recently on hiatus, but they had a link in their sidebar to The Midwest Teen Sex Show which is really incredibly good sex education videos. Oh, and they’re really funny.
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11.27.07
Posted in Media, Tech at 7:16 pm by Cavorter
One of the things that I like about the Zune is that it has podcast support that is more like how I really use them rather than the way they work with iTunes. It’s not perfect by any stretch (Why can’t I squirt a podcast?) but it’s generally very good. Good enough that I’m looking for more content to listen to.
I have two very different kinds of podcasts that I listen to for very different environments. I find that I can’t listen to people talking without having to pay attention to them, at least if I want to get anything out of it. This is just as true of talk radio as it is of audio books. I also find that after 45 minutes of people yakking I get really, really bored pretty quickly but I find items less than 10min long to not be worth the effort to fiddle with the player to listen to (Not perfect #2: Can’t put them in playlists). Which is really unfortunate since I otherwise would have a couple of really short items that I do like (The Engines of Our Ingenuity being a prime example).
So here’s what I’m currently listening to:
I also really used to love SpaceMusic, but that shifted to a paid subscription model a year or so ago. Though looking on the site now there does appear to be some free stuff again so maybe I’ll take a look at them again.
Any suggestions anyone?
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10.10.07
Posted in Music, Personal at 12:53 pm by Cavorter
I’ve always found sense memories to be terribly interesting phenomena.
My most intense sense memory involves the texture and flavor of pancakes with butter and apricot syrup at a Perkins somewhere near what I think was Omaha when I was somewhere around the age of 7ish. I think we were coming home from a funeral for a great uncle and got caught in a plains blizzard on the interstate but in particular the warmth and sweet/tart/sweet/buttery flavor of those pancakes in a warm room at a table with my family is one of my most enduring and cherished memories. I often wonder if that is what I am trying to recreate when I go out with friends and family for dinner as an adult. There is something significant about the feeling of comfort, joy, and connection with my family in that memory that I can almost put into words.
While I have other taste memories (sweetbreads at Cosmos with Lauren) and certainly many visual memories (the synaesthetically “noisy” red backdrop to an exhibit at the Minnesota History Center with Heidi), many of the most emotionally intense sense memories are essentially audio cues centered around music. It’s pretty obvious to me that one of the reasons why music is associated with such strongly emotional memories is that for as long as I can remember I have always used music as a sort of proxy to structure my thoughts.
My brain, like almost anyone else’s as far as I can tell, is a fantastically active place. Thoughts do not occur in isolation so much as they occur in chains and groups alongside other chains and groups and emotion can be a component of those thoughts or sometimes more of a medium that the thoughts are moving through. When it is working well it’s a lot like a big pot of boiling pasta with the varying textures of the vaporizing water and the bobbling pasta shapes dancing around at the top of a startlingly clear medium that siphons off easily and quickly through my hands and mouth and body to manifest in the world. At it’s very worst it seems more like an impenetrable pool of magma that is painful to handle and flows exactly like the fire that it is. Searing and destroying everything in it’s path. Music allows me to sift the particulates in a cloudy medium and settles the roiling boil so that I can actually see what is going on rather than simply having to guess at the contents from the random stew at the surface.
My first music focused sense memory involves sitting in my dad’s car in the parking lot of Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids on a cool fall day with the sort of intense sun that makes it impossible to keep at a comfortable level between baking and chilled. We had just arrived but we were taking a few minutes to finish listening to one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos on the radio before MPR had separate classical and news stations. It was one of the remarkably rare times I remember my dad sitting with the car off and the radio on with the volume up. I don’t know why we where there that particular time, though at a guess it was almost certainly to visit one of his parishioners who was in the hospital for one reason or another.
That example aside, it feels like many of the music memories are related to relationships, and romantic relationships more often than not. They Might Be Giant’s album “Flood“, the song “Birdhouse in your Soul” in particular, for the interminable week it took me to call my first girlfriend up for a first date. Public Image Limited’s song “Rise” and The Godfather’s album “Unreal World” punctuates everything about the relationships with old friends during the summer between high school and college and the implicit and explicit transitions that where happening. Enigma’s album “The Cross of Changes” for the new friends found at college shortly thereafter. Morphine’s album “Cure for Pain” as the intensely stereotypical soundtrack for the breakup with my girlfriend from college. Midnight Oil’s song “Been away too long” and the rest of the “Capricornia” album when Betsy left me that also signaled ends and beginnings to so very, very many things.
I think I can count myself lucky that it has happened often enough that I actually come to recognize that the memory is being formed while it is happening. It’s not a conscious effort, it just seems to be something that I do. Since I use music to organize the screaming mess in my head it is a very natural event for me. This has the obvious upside of proving that I have at least a glimmer of self awareness but also has the accompanying stark terror of the absolute unknown since I do not know what will end up being frozen in that crystal of amber when the moment has completed.
Whatever this piece of amber will contain, it’s soundtrack is going to be Sufjan Steven’s album “Illinois“.
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10.09.07
Posted in Music, Tech at 1:52 pm by Cavorter
At this point I think the inherent advantage of acquiring recorded music solely through the means of traveling to a brick and mortar storefront, perusing the incredibly over complicated system to locate likely albums that I might like to purchase, physically bringing the stack of shiny plastic to the cashier with my own hands and whatever other means I can come up with in the moment, watching as each barcode or price sticker is laboriously tallied, and finally handing over a suitable bundle of paper or small plastic card which may or may not be returned with a large bag containing the shiny plastic I took such pains to collect is that is is not an easy process. I have to have the time and energy to get the store. I have to have enough patience to be able to defeat whatever myopic intelligence designed the system to hide the items that I want from me. Most importantly I have to think about the entire process as I go through it which makes me more likely to think about things like, “Can I afford this?”.
It is that last bit that worries me the most with Amazon.com’s new MP3 Download service. So far I’ve only purchased three albums and I wonder if that isn’t just the taste that I need to go wildly into debt if I don’t keep my wits about.
I have experimented with various music download services at various points and had highly varied experiences with the multitude of them. There is something about the simplicity of Amazon’s execution of the concept that has finally gotten through to me that this is really finally possible.
It certainly has it’s downsides. It currently only runs on Windows, not that I run anything else right now and by the same token it should not actually be too difficult for them to port their client application to just about any OS given how simple it is. Relatively small selection of “only” 1 million tracks (or there abouts) which sounds like a lot but really means that only a small number of the many songs that you might want to buy may be available. Still has a couple of quirks being fairly early in beta though there has already been one client update since release which fixed the only problem that I’ve run into personally.
About that problem: As I mentioned I have purchased three albums from the service. The Cinematic Orchestra’s “Motion”, Skalpel’s self titled album, and Sufjan Stevens’ “Illinois” which turned out to be my first and only cause to contact Amazon’s tech support. I initially sent an email message through their web interface but did not get any reply after 30ish hours so I used the web interface to have them call me (neat trick) and talked to someone very nice who couldn’t quite help me because the tech support for the download service wasn’t quite open for business at 7:30AM CST on a Tuesday. When I finally called them a half hour later a very nice person fairly immediately re-authorized the download links for me and I was able to finally get the album and I’ve been listening to the audio CD I burned immediately all day since. Turns out the new client was likely the reason why I could download the album this time, though neither I nor the tech support guy had any good reason why that might be so. I suspect it has something to do with the rather whimsical and extensive names given to the tracks of this particular album since they’ve been giving some of my other applications some trouble too.
Some of the people who might read this might think that having trouble with one third of my purchases so far is a good example of how new and untried the service is, but I would actually say quite the opposite. The first attempt was utterly perfect and gave me good reason to try it two more times. The client setup is relatively painless, even in Vista with UAC enabled, and the neat little touch of automatically adding the downloads to my iTunes library meant that I could start listening immediately without having to go look for what the client had done with the files. I’m a savvy enough computer user that really that isn’t actually a problem for me, especially given how difficult it can be from other services, but not having to worry about little details like that makes me really think this is ready for everyone, not just those who sometimes wander over near the bleeding edge.
Supposedly they are marking the downloaded files so that if the files show up on a P2P network later they know where they came from, but I’m not honestly worried about that since I don’t participate in any of that. Otherwise they are pure MP3 files with appropriately pre-populated tags and even embedded cover art. I can, and have, used them any of the multitude of places that I use mp3 files.
I honestly think this is finally it. Give it a try.
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08.15.07
Posted in Video at 9:02 am by Cavorter
So I am just about done with Star Trek: Next Generation Season 4 through Netflix, and my understanding is that there is some overlap between that Star Trek: Deep Space 9. So my question is: Is there a particular combination that I should watch them in so that they make the most sense in the shared continuity, or does it not matter?
For example, should I setup my queue so that I get ST:TNG S5 D1 at the same time that I get ST:DS9 S1 D1, or should I watch all of ST:TNG S5 and then watch all of ST:DS9 S1, or the other way around.
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.
Oh, and while I’m on the topic: I find it very interesting finally getting to a season where I have seen absolutely none of the episodes. Since I have seen some of the later episodes, finding answers to things like “Who is the little Klingon hanging around Worf?” and “Cardassians? Who are they?” is really a pretty big relief. While I understood that Alexander was Worf’s son, I never really knew how that had happened and, in fact, had never seen the episode where Worf got together with the mother until I finally saw that in June or July.
Though honestly I find it a bit hard to take that there had been a major bloddy war going on with the Cardassians during the entire first two years of the show and they never quite bothered to mention it. I smell RetCon!
Update: I did check around a bit more and I think I’m going to watch DS9 S1 after I finish TNG S6.
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08.04.07
Posted in General, Music at 10:22 am by Cavorter
While I’m on the topic, I should mention the details about my horn.
A few years ago after searching for a few months I came across a used four valve front bell American Euphonium that was in decent shape (Lots of scratches, some dents, lacquer is very worn but largely intact) for a remarkably good price. The sound isn’t as good as the Yamaha YEP-321S I played in college but for less than $500 it is certainly good enough. Nicely wide though just a touch breathy.
Anyway, this morning I finally ran down the serial number (237531) and bell markings and I’ve found out that it is a F.A. Reynolds Contempora BR-06 4-Valve Baritone manufactured in 1967 in Abiline, TX.
I’m actually wondering a bit if some of the breathy sound may be from the mouthpiece I’m using right now, which is a Bach 6 1/2 AL. It’s a lot more like the Bach 12C that I remember playing on in high school than the shallow mouthpiece that came with it. I need to do some more research about the topic.
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Posted in General, Music at 9:38 am by Cavorter
While we didn’t get to any actual gaming this last session, Shaun mentioned that he had acquired a clarinet and was was re-learning to play it after having a sort of relevatory moment at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. So I mentioned that I had acquired a euphonium a few years ago but had been horrible about actually getting it out and playing it very often (though I am proud to say it comes out at least once every six months, which is better than nothing) and Mark mentioned that he hadn’t played his trumpet in quite awhile.
So we can blame him when he also said something like, “We could start a klezmer band…” and so we are. I ordered a copy of “Easy Klezmer Music” while we were talking.
I’ve had a couple of chances to play my horn since then and I’m both stunned at how much I’ve forgotten and also at how easily some of it is coming back. It’s really nice to have that old brass smell around the house.
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