Image from here

The biggest problem of course with moving to digital is how are you going to get the videos or music to where you want them to be.   I’ve really fought with this problem literally for over a decade now (yes in 1995 I had a computer hooked up to a stereo and a TV).

The last incarnation I was using was a first generation Mac Mini.  The problem was that the streaming wasn’t fast enough for the Mac Mini (ironically every other computer in the house streamed just fine).   So I would have to copy video files over to the computer manually to get completely stutter free playback.  I dealt though until just a couple months ago.

Image from here

In November I purchased my first original X-Box (yes I’m behind the times).   I had always wanted to run XBOX Media Center on it, but didn’t want to go through the soldering effort to put a mod chip in, or track down esoteric software with the action replay kit to soft mod it.  I did manage to find instructions on how to mod the x-box and install XBMC with things I already had, such as a computer and screw drivers.  The most frightening thing about it was hot swapping a live IDE hard drive.   Years of tech work has told me this is a no-no, but I did it anyway and it worked.

I even went out and purchased a remote control for the X-Box and can now browse from the couch.   I went back and forth on whether to get a wireless controller or the remote, I settled on the remote because it was cheaper and more intuitive for anyone other then myself.

For MP3 playback we sometimes use the X-Box installation, but more then likely we are either using ipods, our N810′s, or the whole main floor audio we have going.   In the basement we have a computer working as an MP3 jukebox.  Off of this machine there is 3 different sets of speakers (one is the main stereo system) – that can cover the whole first floor of the house in zoned audio.    Each room has it’s own volume control and it works fairly well.  In the next year I will more then likely start running the cables upstairs to work on whole house audio.

This post has multiple parts to it, so fair warning I’m guessing this one is going to be long.   Lately I’ve been more and more annoyed at traditional hard copy media.  It’s a pain in the butt to deal with and takes up way too much physical space (for those that know me you find that sentence greatly amusing).

Pictures

This started happening over the last year with photo albums.   Photo albums are terrible.   It means normally that one person has a copy of the image and you can’t share them.  It is essentially technology of the last generation.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a believer in having prints, but the pictures themselves.

I’ve made it my mission to start getting the family photos and scanning them in.   I’ve managed to get most of my father’s photos from the era he was with my mother.   The ones I’m missing are any he has of the kids hanging on the walls in his house.   My next run is going to be the pictures from his current family (so a good 15-16 years worth of pictures to go).

My grandmother on the other hand has been very tightfisted with her photos.  I can understand her being protective, but so far I’ve managed to get 59 photos out of her to scan (out of literally over a 1000-2000).   I have managed to scan my photo album, and more recently used the digital SLR and took pictures of my scrap book from high school.   So both of these can be tucked away in boxes that I don’t need to look at and take up physical space in my house.

All the photos I have are now uploaded to Flickr.   You can also read about my photo sharing issue with my mother over here.

Continued tomorrow in part 2

Tonight the weather was bad so instead of taking what would be an unsafe over three hour commute home I decided I was going to get a hotel room.   My wife had called and warned me before I was really aware of the weather so she was aware with no surprises.   I managed to get a room that in a clear day would take me less then eight minutes to get to the office.   Tonight it took me over twenty to get here.  The last three minutes was getting into the snow entrenched parking lot that was on a slight incline and had about 5 inches of unplowed snow – I spun the car sideways getting in.

When I was consulting I stayed in many hotels.  I also learned before you went anywhere in bad weather to get a reservation.   So at this hotel close to work I had reserved my room, it came to around forty dollars before tax.    Let’s have a tour through the room and see if it it’s worth it.

The following pictures were taken with my cell phone so please excuse the quality.

This is my coffee table – seems someone didn’t like it very much.

Bathroom shot one – somewhat normal right?

Still somewhat normal – not great by any means though…

OMG – WTF IS THAT????   First here we have the MELTED hair dryer plug  then you have that round knob next to it.   Did you know it took me a good five minutes to get the light on in the bathroom because of that damn knob.   You see you have to turn it, and then the light is on a timer, when the timer runs out the light goes off.   Maybe this is a green initiative by Days Inn.

Another standard Bathroom shot.

Well I at least have tissues I can cry into.

I’m glad it wasn’t hot – I don’t really want to touch the air conditioning knob.

Mobile blogging station / Bed shot.

Another bed shot.

Such neat and orderly hangars they have around here.

Ah – I can iron my clothes with this conveniently placed ironing board.

On closer examination – maybe I don’t want to use this ironing board.

Look a TV, The Bucket List is playing – I don’t think this hotel was on their list of stops in the movie.   Also if you adjusted the location of the TV – the picture goes bad.  It’s not a wiring connection either – it’s just retarded.

My mother had that lamp – she got it over twenty years ago.

My heater that doesn’t fully heat the room

I call this area the west wing.

I think this coffee maker would make a lot of people cry – and those styrofoam cups are the only cups in the room.

My alarm clock, it would be my jelly bean station, but I don’t have any jelly beans.

Cross advertising – I’m not sure which name is getting dragged through the mud on this deal….

This is where the air conditioning would have come out with if it was below freezing outside.

Well at least I have a smoke detector, I’ll be safe for the night.  Something looks a little wrong though.

Yes this is the way I found it.  So if I die in a fire tonight – you all know who is to blame.

I’ve stayed at bad places, but this may be one of the worst.  It does look nice on the outside though.

BTW – I think I know what happened to the iron and why it’s gone.   There seems to be a melted carpet spot in just the shape of an iron on the floor – it didn’t quite come out though – pity.

Picture from here

I could pick on a few things actually, once again I didn’t vote for the guy, but I don’t absolutely detest him.   I’m in wait and see mode.  Ars Technica is reporting about Obama’s plead to push back the transition to digital TV.   If we look at the digital TV migration timeline, we can see the originally scheduled date was Dec. 31 2006.   Because of multiple issues it was pushed back and brings us to this upcoming Feb. 17th as the transition time.

We can argue that the government hasn’t done enough to inform the public or make it easy for the public, but I would argue otherwise.   I was well aware of this migration when it was first discussed over 10 years ago.   All in all the government has pushed out this transition longer then necessary.   You can say that’s it’s a good cautious thing they are doing by waiting and delaying, but every delay costs the tax payers more money.

If we truly want to get through this we need to pull the bandage off as quickly as possible.

You would think from the image I chose for the header that I was doing something cool with the Nintendo Entertainment System.   This unfortunately is not the case.  Where the Nintendo came into play was that it was the object of my desire.   I desperately wanted an NES.  This was sometime around seventh or eighth grade so the years would have 1988 -1989 and the Nintendo was in full swing, you can see one of the commercials below.

Now my father didn’t believe in video games.   About five years earlier he got us a Commodore Vic-20, this is all fine and dandy – my parents fell for the whole “give you kid a computer and he’ll be computer literate for life” crap that they were handing out in the eighties.  A computer was meant for learning and yes there were a few games we had for it, but it was meant to learn something on.   I learned I never wanted to be a programmer, that’s what I learned.  I could go to my neighbors and play the Atari 2600 or play Ultima on his Mac Classic – but me – I was going to have the Vic-20 and like it because I wasn’t getting anything else.

Picture from here

We moved to Vermilion the summer before my seventh grade year.   I’m sure I started begging for a NES around that time if not earlier.   I’m sure the logic explained to me was that if I wanted a Nintendo I was going to have to earn it.    This meant getting a job.   I don’t know about your area but for Vermilion, OH there wasn’t much call in the work force for 12-13 year old kids.   The one thing that did open up was the ability to get a paper route.  The area where we lived in Elyria was a bit too rough for a 11-12 year old to deliver papers, but Vermilion was a quiet small town where such things almost seem nostalgic.

Picture from here (not me)

Another boy was giving up his paper route that was a year younger then me (should have been a sign) and did a week long transition with me so that I could learn the route.   By the end of the week I learned the route, I had my little punch card slip ring for billing, I had a carrier bag, and I also had baskets on the back of my bicycle to carry newspapers in.   I would try to say it was pimp, but I can’t even type that with a straight face.   I rode my bike to school and I got mocked by how stupid it looked.  Of course being a geek on the nth degree anyways there is always other things to get picked on then a bike, so I struggled through it.  I was a newspaper boy for the Lorain Morning Journal.

You may say that I learned character and fiscal responsibility because of that job.   You would also be wrong.  I hated that job with a passion.   I struggled for the first couple months to get through it.  The NES was the apple of my eye and I was going to save the 99.99 (plus tax) for the Action System which included Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt (and the pimp NES Zapper).   I was impatient to get it, so impatient that I gave my mother the money to get it while I was at school.   You would think this being the first large purchase of my life I would have wanted to go and hand over the money and buy the system myself, nope I just wanted the damn thing home.

I get home, my mother isn’t there.   I go do my paper route and get back home, my mother isn’t there.   I sit in the grass on the front yard and wait.   Eventually my mother pulls up in that blue dodge caravan (minivan) we had.  She had done other shopping and had a ton of bags.  Which one was my Nintendo?????

My mother stopped me and said she talked to the sales person who told her the Sega Master System was the better system to buy since it was faster and supported more colors.  WTF?  I had worked my butt off in a job hated to have my mother go out and buy me a Sega Master Sytem.  No one owned a Sega Master System, only people with no friends owned a Sega Master System.   I was not going to own a Sega Master System.    I told her with certainty that she had no right to spend the money I earned to buy a Sega Master System.  We were going to get back in the car right then, go to the store and exchange it for a Nintendo Entertainment System.

My mother then started laughing.  Out of the back of the van she pulled out a Nintendo Action Set.   You do not mess with a pre-teen in that way – ever.   She said she was going to go upstairs and use the restroom, after which she would come down and help me hook it up to the TV.  I think by the time she flushed the toilet I was already on World 1-2 of Super Mario Bros.  I had hooked up the Vic-20 so many times that I knew how to do it in my sleep.   The NES was more of the same.

At this point I did not want to do the paper route any more, but my grandfather thought it was good for me so I kept plodding along.    I delivered papers a 3 AM Christmas morning wasn’t that quite the thrill, not.   I would definitely preferred to have been sleeping.    More and more of my customers were moving to prepaid accounts, which cut into my money.   You would think it wouldn’t have effected  my bottom line, but I lost out on tip money from these customers – and to this day I believe the Journal used some creative account billing to the paper boys.    My grandfather thought I was just doing it wrong, but I was let off the hook after about a year.

Me and my grandparents a year or so after the paper route.

My brother took over the paper route with the help of my grandfather and my mother in delivering the newspapers.   Now I don’t know about you but if someone would have driven me on the route every day, I may have been more likely to actually like the job.   He is five and half years younger then me, so they were not going to let him go off alone to do it.  The funniest thing was after about a year they started loosing money also and it became not financially viable for them either.    I guess it wasn’t just me.

You would think that this would end my families relationship with the Journal after so many bad experiences, it didn’t.  For the last few years my sister (now 22) has a motor route in Vermilion delivering papers.   I guess she makes really good money at it.   It would seem the third time is a charm.   I don’t think my brother or my sister ever hated it as much as I did.   I did get my NES though.

Below is a link to Google Maps that shows the actual route location of my paper route.

Picture from here

A couple news sources are reporting today (here, here, and here) that the LA Times is suspending their program of using a wiki for editorials.   Now in a controlled environment like Wikipedia where they have the volunteers to handle un-authorized edits, wiki’s can be a great thing.   In the hands of exposing your edits to the audience of a major newspaper – I wouldn’t have gone that route.

What they were finding is that people would make their own slant on the editorials – such as changing the word abortion ot the word murder.  They also were inundated with spam and porn ads.   Sounds like they didn’t have the best idea on the onset of setting up a wiki or properly staffing what would be a high profile use of the technology.   This is technology that is meant to be changed and updated.   That ability alone has made some people suspect of Wikipedia.   Newspapers are dying out in America – but this example shows why such high profile companies can not hand the keys to the car to just everyone asking.   Citizen media has it’s place, but old media shouldn’t be attempting to tag it on without understanding hte consequences or the work involved in maintaining it.

I wonder if anyone got fired?

Picture from here

A few months ago my home server lost all of my MP3′s from a share.  I was freaking out thinking some process had magically deleted them.  Then I noticed the partition was missing.   I spent a few days banging my head against the wall trying to recover the data and nothing helped.   Since I’m a listener of Security Now, I attempted to use Spin Rite on the drive, even this didn’t help it.   I was freaking out.

I set aside the drive and re-addressed it yesterday.  A friend of mine had a copy of Partition Doctor 3.5 and we ran it against my drive.   In a matter of minutes we managed to get the drive back up and all of the MP3′s were there.   Neither my wife and I were too anxious to go through the 2-3 week ripping process we did last time when we re-ripped at a higher bit rate.

This is not a promotion, I get no money from the links you click, if however you do have an issue with a lost windows partition, try Partition Doctor’s demo version and it will show you if it can be recovered.

Maximum PC recently ran an article titled 50 Skills Every Real Geek Should Have, I wanted to go through and see how I ranked in their skill list.   Let’s find out.

1. Name the Connectors – yes I was able to :)

2. Run your essential apps on a USB stick – no I don’t do this, I could – I just prefer to run everything in the cloud or on my N810 – which is with me most of the time.

3. Straighten Pins on a CPU – I have done this too many times

4. Know the 13 basic HTML Tags – well I kinda know most of them – I use freaking wordpress I hardly need to use HTML and when I do I look it up and hav ethe answer in seconds.   Though I do know quite a few by heart that aren’t listed in the basic 13.

5.  Get through to executive customer service – hey I read the consumerist.

6.  Beat quake in 60 minutes – maybe at one point in time, but I’m not big on FPS games.

7.  Build a Hackintosh – I know how, I just don’t the components that seem to work, and I’m a cheap bastard that won’t buy parts just to run OSX - I’ll stick with ubuntu as my alternative OS.

8.  Watch TV Online legally – um that’s how I watch 100% of my TV these days.

9.  Get around a content filter from a public computer – yes I know how, I’ve helped friends at other companies, it’s not worth it to do it at my own job though.

10. Recite Pi to 23 decimal places – nope – I have no inclination to ever learn either.

11. Replace the controller board on a hard drive – hey I did that once, it’s not a skill that comes up at parties though.

12.  Benchmark your computer – really?  Is this even on this list? Yes, I was doing this before I fully understood what the benchmarks meant on my 386 DX40.

13. Decorate your room with only printer paper – am I physically in the skill set to be able to do this?  Yes I am – would I?  No.  I’m more likely to decorate with NES cartridges.

14. Securely erase your data so it can’t be recovered – yes I am capable – it would be easier if you encrypted it first though.

15.  Get into a windows computer if you don’t have a password – yes I’ve done this quite a few times.

16.  Hide data from anyone – yes encryption, hidden volumes, stegnography (which I got bored with in 2001) – I am capable of doing all that – I’m more likely ot share my data then hide it though.

17. Explain what e=mc2 means – yes I would like the e=MC2 with a side of fries please – yes I am capable, but refuse to put in the details here since I want to make it through this list.

18.  Abstain from buying extended warranties – I may have bought one, once – it was on something i thoguht it fall apart though – so it’s all good.

19.  Use photoshop or gimp – yes I am capable.

20. Use a DSLR in full manual mode – I can – I’m just lazy and prefer it to do the work.

21. Mooch your neighbors wi-fi – my neighbor doesn’t have wi-fi but I’m ready to mooch when they do.

22. Protext your wi-fi – Wep2 currently – For a while I had mac filtering, I hated to keep getting mac addresses from visitors though.

23. Create an animated spray in Valve games – um – I don’t think I’ve played a single one for more then 5 minutes….so this one is a no.

24.  Setup RAID – yes I’ve done this a few times over the years for my home network.  Now implement Iscsi raid across multiple computers – that’s a challenge.

25. Calculate a Pitchers ERA – no I don’t know how – but I know google will give me the answer quicker then I can calculate it.

26. Run two Operating Systems – um I dual boot currently……

27. Install a hard drive in laptop – done before and some day I’ll do it again.

28. Pull off an elaborate prank – I think have the skill set and knowledge – I just never have – unless stealing street signs as a teenager counts.

29.  Rocket jump with a macro – um – I said I don’t really do FPS games – so no I can’t do this.

30.  Wire your home with ethernet – um every place I’ve lived with my wife we have had wired ethernet – we even used RG58 at one point.

31.  Know the 6 most important linux commands – yes I get command not found when I’m not thinking and run them in windows.

31. Rip your CDs to Flac – we did this for awhile then went back to MP3

32.  Stream Music, Movies, Pictures to any TV in the house – I’ve done this before – now we just carry our laptops around – shrug.

33.  Install and configure a VM – yes I’ve done this for literally years (maybe even a decade by now)

34.  Run multiple monitors – yes I use to dual monitor and run SWG on two different ones at the same time – I’m sad I know.

35. Run hacked firmware on a router – yes liek the rest of hte world I have a hacked linksys router /yawn.

36.  Pick a lock – I’m not good at it, but I’ve done it a couple times.

37.  Tell the difference between Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb – it’s been awhile but I think I could.

38.  Avoid DRM on everything – well streaming video legally that they talked about above seems to contradict this one doesn’t it.   However all my local video, music, picutres, and ebooks are DRM free.

39. Download a flash video and reformat it – yes I’ve done this – youtube videos locally stored on the N810 ftw.

40.  Get around in DOS – I grew up and DOS and resisted windows for a long time – so let’s just say yes.

41. Rip a DVD to h.264 – yes been there done that.

42.  Overclock your PC – yes I’ve done this my pride and joy was overclocking my AMD 133 mhz 486 to 160 MHZ – and it benchmarked and ran like a pentium 133 for half the cost.

43.  Use remote desktop – it’s part of my job – so yes.

44. Debate the merits of a star destroyer vs. the enterprise – yes, and the star destroyer would win.

45. Buld your own computer – built too many to actually count – I’m serious to – I worked at a small PC store and we sold hundreds – thousands of machines – so I cna build my own.

In irony they don’t seem to actually have 50 things on their list – so I think most geeks should know how to count also.

Picture from here

Yesterday on the radio they were ranking which was the most important moments in history in which you can remember what you were doing. I found the link to the quiz they were using, which was originally put up by Slate. While I do rememebr some of the events, others seem to go by without notice. I wanted to comment on the moments that happened within my lifetime. At least it will give my future son an idea of what I thought about the events that we consider important in history. This list is not in order of importance, it’s just the descending order in the slate list.

Berlin Wall comes tumbling down – I can’t say I truly remember the actual day the Berlin Wall fell down. It was a vague thing, something that was expected for awhile that was built up over time. I could be wrong on that. The one thing I thought was kind of cool about this was the fact that at Higbee’s you could purchase pieces of the Berlin Wall in a sack. These days that type of action would make me immensely sad, it’s a sign of America’s need to profit off of an event. In retrospect how did we know that they were pieces of the actual wall?

Mount St. Helens Erupts – Though I was four I remember this. I also remember President Carter on TV so I have a good young memory. This was a scary thing to me. I think I had this thought that volcano’s didn’t exist any more, that they were something that was from the time of dinosaurs. That it could happen in real life was very scary to me. I’m sure I watched this at my grandmother’s house on her floor model console TV.

Katrina Hits New Orleans – For Hurrican Katrina Xie and I were at home, we were playing SWG and attempting to get a hold of our friend that lived in New Orleans. We managed a day or so later to get a hold of him and post a picture of his house. It was scary knowing someone that was going through the disaster. We almost went down to help but didn’t. The evacuations and such were keeping people at bay we didn’t know when to go or what to do. We both wish we had gone, but that time has now passed. We are left with what we did do.

Miracle On Ice – Ok this happened while I was alive, but I remember nothing about it.

John Lennon Shot – This is another one of those where I was alive, but I don’t remember it.

Elvis Presley Dies at 42 – I definitely don’t remember this one since I was only one year old.

San Francisco World Series Earthquake – If I had followed sports ever in my life I think I would have paid more attention to this. I do remember the earthquake and wondered if California was going to fall into the Ocean. If this was the proverbial big one. I’m influenced in that thinking because of Superman II.

Princess Diana Dies – I remember this. I also wsan’t sure what the big deal was. I know one of my uncles cried because of this. To many people Diana was the last true royalty. This was probably because she was the modern storybook princess.

Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident – Once again, I was too young and do not remember this one.

Reagan Shot – We heard about this when I was at school. Since it was a private christian school we all had a prayer session for the president. Reagan was like a god to me back then, the invulnerable most powerful man. This re-affirmed that when he survived, but I was on shaky ground at first. I was young and scared for the life of our president. To this day I still personally think he was one of four greatest presidents of the last one hundred years.

Shuttle Challenger Explodes – I was in school again when this happened. It was a big media event with the first school teacher going up with the shuttle. This was the event that shocked the nation. We got out of school early that day and I do remember being upset. For what seemed to be weeks they showed that footage on the news.

JFK Jr. Dies in a Plane Crash – I’m not sure why this made the list. I remember it, and I was sad in the abstract, but it didn’t really pull at my heart strings. Around the same time I remember John Denver dying – I think the guy that who sang with Kermit the frog being gone affected me more.

Shuttle Columbia Disintegrates on Re-entry – I woke up early that day and was watching TV in the family room in the Oregon house. I was shocked and hurt when I saw this. I started crying. I thought this was the worst disaster that I had witnessed since it would hurt human’s getting back to the stars which I felt was our future. I woke up Xie and told her, she didn’t understand why I was upset. I just was. This event truly affected me.

9/11 Attacks – I was driving to work at Symantec on the beltway and a radio announcer talked about plane hitting the trade center. I’m not sure if the second plane had hit or not at that point. I thought it was some weird joke by the disc jockey’s. It turned out it wasn’t. When I arrived at work ewe were told that if it was too much for us, then we could return home (paid). I went on with my day following events online. I called Griffaw and Xie at home to turn on the TV at home to see what was happening. We kept in contact through out the day via IM. Griffaw didn’t move form that TV for four days watching everything as it unfolded. I’ll leave my own political comments about this time out of this post.

Asian Tsunami – We didn’t watch a lot of news at this time. I was aware of the event and read about it online, but it wasn’t an in your face major thing for me.

Dale Earnhardt Dies at Daytona – Really? I don’t know why this made the list. I don’t know where I was or even if I cared at all. I don’t follow NASCAR so someone dying in a car crash is a risk that I was aware that drivers took.

There is one more I would like to do that isn’t on that list:

Kurt Cobain’s Death – I didn’t watch MTV so I wasn’t immediately informed of Kurt Cobain’s death. At this time period I didn’t even like Nirvana’s music (they are one of my favorites now). I was one of those kids the next day mocking the other kids that were crying. I understand this now though. Some people may disagree but in a way Cobain was a Lennon for our generation. A voice that spoke out and said what we were feeling. Someone who we could identify with. I have never had a living musician that I felt that way about, but I understand why everyone else was upset. Wisdom is granted with age.

If you don’t see all the video links make sure you view this a creeva.com.

Stargate Atlantis Season 3- more Stargate goodness.

Amazon Synopsis:

With Stargate SG-1 now permanently off the data screen (except for a TV movie or two) after ten productive seasons, it appears that the fate of the universe is now the responsibility of the Stargate Atlantis crew. Based on the latter’s third season, whose 20 episodes (plus a wealth of bonus features) are made available here on five discs, we’re in good hands.
Three years into it, Atlantis has retained numerous familiar elements while continuing to evolve steadily. The core cast is intact, with the cocky wiseacre-hero Lt. Col. John Sheppard (Joe Flanigan) and the egotistical, neurotic genius Dr. Rodney McKay (David Hewlett) still the most entertaining of the bunch; as the series explores the characters’ personal lives and backstories, we even meet (in “McKay and Mrs. Miller”) the latter’s sister, who’s every bit the wiz that he is. On the other hand, the roles of team leader Dr. Elizabeth Weir (Torri Higginson) and members Teyla (Rachel Luttrell) and Ronon Dex (Jason Momoa) are neither especially well-written nor well-played. The return of Richard Dean Anderson (and his sense of humor) as General Jack O’Neill, the SG-1 mainstay during most of its run, for a few cameos is most welcome, as is the presence of the Wraith, the series’ principal villains (SG-1 fans will also recognize the “sentient machines” known as the Replicators from that series). With their flowing white locks, cat-like eyes, pale, almost translucent skin, ultra-fine black leather dusters, and, in one case, shades that would make a Hollywood hipster envious, the Wraith remain the coolest bad guys on the sci-fi scene. We already knew that they feed on humans, but this season brings some startling new revelations, particularly in “Common Ground,” an excellent episode that finds Sheppard and a Wraith (Christopher Heyerdahl) forming an unlikely alliance against a mutual enemy; we also witness the return of the Wraith known as Michael (Connor Trinneer), who was the subject of the Atlantis team’s ongoing “retro-virus” experiment (designed to make Wraiths human) in Season Two and plays a significant recurring role in Season Three. Other developments are apparent as well, but most dramatic of all is the death of one of the team’s key members.
Stargate Atlantis isn’t the most original TV show ever created; in fact, elements of The Running Man, Alien, The Abyss, Enemy Mine, and other sci-fi works are sometimes so obvious that the characters themselves mention them in dialogue. But as always, the action sequences, special effects, models, and other technical elements are first-rate, as are the bonus features, which include episode commentaries, featurettes, and photo galleries.

Stargate Season 1, I’ll be going over all of my box sets so with the Stargate franchise there is going to be alot of redundancy.   When I first heard they were going to a series on Stargate I thought it was a stupid idea.  Macgyver has the team lead, HA – I love Macgyver and all but I didn’t think Richard Dean Anderson could have pulled it off.  I was wrong.

Stargate is one of my favorite TV franchises of all time now.

Now since I have 10 of these to write – I’ll give you Amazon’s review:

Hollywood’s film archives overflow with the carcasses of dismal movies based on lame ’60s and ’70s television shows, a syndrome that shows no sign of abating. But here’s evidence that the reverse effect, turning a movie into a TV series, can have surprisingly positive results. Indeed, based on the 21 episodes produced for the first season of Stargate SG-1, it could be argued that this show is significantly better than the 1994 feature it’s derived from.

The central conceit of the original Stargate–the existence of an artificially created “wormhole” through which one can travel to different worlds light years away from Earth–was an intriguing one. In seizing on the obvious possibilities for expanding on that premise, series executive producers-writers Jonathan Glassner and Brad Wright have smartly retained some of the film’s basic elements (its amalgam of myth and theoretical hokum, or the ongoing clash of wills between scientists and soldiers), while adding a variety of fresh ideas (including new characters, new locations, and a welcome dose of humor, much of it supplied by Richard Dean Anderson, MacGyver himself, who replaces Kurt Russell in the central role of Colonel Jack O’Neill). The result is a show with multidimensional heroes and villains and consistently compelling story lines (many of them introduced in the pilot and carried forward through subsequent episodes) balancing excellent special effects and production values. All this and full frontal nudity, too (at least in the aforementioned pilot). Who can resist?

The first season is spread out over five DVDs; the 100-minute pilot shares the first volume with two other episodes, while discs 2 to 5 contain anywhere from three to five shows each. Sound and visuals (in widescreen format) alike will take full advantage of any home system’s capabilities. But aside from language and subtitle options, bonus features are limited to brief featurettes that play like commercials and provide little in the way of background information or insight (there are no features at all on the first disc). Then again, if you really want to know what that symbol on Teal’c's forehead means, or why the nasty, parasitic Goa’ulds look a lot like the fledgling stomach monsters in the Alien series, there is no doubt a Web site out there just for you.

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I was listening to the last weeks episode of Net@Night and they were complaining that the Twitter community has become fragmented.  This is true in the online world, as well as the offline world.  We are all not friends.  Sometimes I think what you read, listen to, watch, or have to say is utterly idiotic and reprehensible.   I’m sorry.   I do.   I also know that some of you think the same things about me, especially those that are completely fed up with me.

We call places like Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc.  social networks.  They are and they are not.  If you consider High School an experiment in social networking I guess they are social networks.   I prefer to think of them as “Social Platforms”.   These are sites and applications that allow you to be social, but you don’t have to be.   I enjoy going to a movie with someone else and don’t really enjoy going by myself.   That doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there that don’t enjoy going by themselves.   Some people join social networks for the games, some for the functions, and yes most for the social aspect and the ability to connect with people.

I’ve written before that I use different social platforms in different ways.  Some communities, like twitter, I take an active role and participate in, others I hang back and show up when I receive a comment on some piece of work I’ve commented on.   I just don’t have time to be a good community member and interact exclusively (or a lot) on the literally hundreds of social network sites I belong to.  Giving the lack of time in being able to deal with all of them, I write once and post everywhere.  I deal with comments and such.

I won’t add you to my friends list if I haven’t dealt with you in some sort of capacity.  I add you if I’ve met you through online gaming, real life meetings, or I’ve had some sort of conversation with you.   I won’t add you if you thought I look interesting and just want to chat (don’t worry I’m not requesting friendship form you if you look interesting either).   Heck I don’t even like some of the networks I’m a member of.  What does this mean though?

Does it mean I’m not networking socially?   I am and I’m not.   I’m hanging out with friends or exchanging ideas with people I know.   If your coming along for the ride, more power to you.  I’m not going to these just to meet you, some unknown person to me.   Until I know you I don’t want to network with you.

What does this mean in general?  I’ve pigeon holed myself into these social platforms.  I’ve become cliquish in a way that also existed in high school.   Just because I haven’t welcomed you with open arms doesn’t mean I refuse to get to know you, it just takes time.   This is what happens to the splintered groups amongst all of these social platforms.  They have their own secret hand shakes and communities that exist on the platform.   This is actually quite a good thing, this is how you fulfill the niche market.   One size doesn’t fit all.  I do believe your data and the data explicitly shared with you should be able to be moved to another platform, data should be open and you should be able to make your own decisions over the data and meta data you create.     Splintered communities online just show us the social model that we have in the real world can replicate and exist online.

Because online communities begin to form and evolve organically the same way they do in meat space, we know that they are real true communities.   They aren’t Utopian society love-ins.  Just because your friends with Bob and Jane and I’m friends with them doesn’t mean we have anything in common to talk about.  Personally I have issues with Bob and Jane on some things, what if those are the things that you have in commonality with them?  I would then hate you.   I don’t want to hate, but I don’t want to get to know you either.     That’s not a bad thing.  Like real life we need to get to know each other first.   You don’t give everyone on the street you meet your phone number – why would you add them to your friends list.

It’s not necessarily about hiding information from them.  There are a lot of people like myself who literally broadcast their information broadly and openly across the internet.   You really aren’t gaining too much beyond more access to direct communication to me by being on my friends list.   I think these leads us to rethink the idea of friend lists.

Now go friend me on every possible social network you find that has a Creeva.

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There was a movie I saw in either my pre-teen or early teenage years that I’ve been trying to track down.   If I remember it may have been a canadian movie.   It was aired on Channel 43 or Channel 19 in the late eighties or early nineties (that doesn’t really help when the movie was actually released).  The plot line involved a teacher and her students being kidnapped.   They were taken to an old farm which seemed to have an underground complex???  

The kidnappers/attackers all wore masks that were howard the duckish, but one was defintely Daffy Duck, and the other kidnappers did refer to him as Daffy.   At one part in the movie Daffy had his head chopped off, when they found the body they pushed to wake him and the head fell off and rolled to the side.  In the big climactic scene the teacher and one of the older male students stripped down to their underwear and swam through an undergound stream/p[assageway.  Along the way there was air pockets they struggled to suck air from, and eventually they made it free. 

Is it a good movie.  No I think it’s very much B-movie fair, expecially from the memories I’ve imparted out to you.   I used to have this movie recorded off of tv and onto VHS.   What I would like to know is the title of this film, and try to hunt it down to watch it one last time. 

Can you help me?

This being my first in the series of movies I own reviews (there will be another one that falls under movies I’ve seen), so be kind since I’m not a pro reviewer.

American Psycho is one of those few movies I wish desperately that I had seen in the theater.  This was the film that showed me what Christian Bale is capable of.  If you enjoy his performance in the Batman movies, this is where it all comes and stems from.  Bale has always been great at getting inside of the character and showing what the character is made of.

The book that the movie was based on was meant to be a commentary on the 1980′s.  The arrogance, hubris, and lack of empathy that the business world felt to the smaller man.   The lead protagonist, Patrick Bateman (played by Bale), is a yuppie turned serial killer.   He causing pain and suffering in different levels (real and imagined) to those around him.  It’s a brilliant dark comedy (though I’m sure my grandparents wouldn’t find it the least bit funny).

American Psycho roles out and in the end you don’t know what is true, what is is imagined, and what is a lie.   Did the whole film happen in his head?  Was there a cover-up?  Should he have fed the ATM the kitten?  All in all it was a fun romp.  I’ve owned it on VHS and DVD, and I’ll probably upgrade to Blu-Ray if I ever manage to bring myself to go all next gen.

I’d write more, but I have some videos I need to return.

You can even buy it now on DVD from Amazon for 3.99.  They also have it on Blu-Ray for 16.95.

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The sex talk, it’s something teenagers dread and so do parents.   I think I was a pre-teen the first time my parents tried to broach the subject.    I had already been aware from enough TV shows were a parent attempted to have a sex talk with their child that it was not a good thing.   I avoided it like the plague, just not wanting to deal with it.

The first time my parents were watching the show Dallas and we’re all aware how much sex is shown non explicitly on prime time soap operas.    My parents were discussing and wondering if I understood what was happening and if it would effect me.   Now I’m not going to say I understood completely, but I knew enough to understand where this conversation was headed and I didn’t want any of it.   I replied that they were just going to bed and getting ready to fall asleep.   That was the first time I avoided this conversation.

It was a tight end-run in sixth grade when I scored the highest in class on a sex education test.   Actually it was more a genetics test, but I got both the extra credit question correct, plus 100% on the test – this brought my score to 106%, the highest out of the whole 100 students in the sixth grade.

Over the following years I mastered avoidance of the subject, until the week before I was going to leave for college.   My mother sat me down and started to explain sex to me, at this point in time why bother.  I realized for some reason my avoidance tactics were not going to work this time.   I told my mother point blank, “I don’t want to talk about this, I lost my virginity three years ago and I don’t think there is anything you can tell me.”   That shut her up, she mulled around and I went back to my day of packing.

Now I have ot start planning down the road how I’m going to talk to my kid about sex and when.   I understand the avoidance tactics so they won’t be able to pull that one.   Of course if it was only my decision I would let them learn the same way I did, school gossip, school education, and practicing it themselves.   Sadly I’ve already been told it isn’t going to work out that way.

I’ve done the community band circuit for a year now and I’ve played with two community bands.  The one thing I have noticed is that the bands don’t really seem to be growing.  When they do grow it’s usually by an older member decides to join in the band.  The youth market seems to be completely disenfranchised.   I can understand part of that, though I declined to the join the VCMA when it was first formed due to not liking the director.   It wasn’t because I didn’t want to play, I still had the yearly Vermilion Alumni Band to play in, then I moved to Oregon.   While there I hardly ever pulled out my trumpet and when I did it was just for a half hour stint every few months.   My lips didn’t have the range or stamina they once did.   After blowing out my lip the last couple years at Alumni after moving back to Ohio, I decided I need to bring more regular playing in my life.  This led me to community band.  Since I am young(er) I have a different perspective on the band.

The first thing is that the music (at least over the summer) is extremely heavily weighted to music written before I was born.   If we play anything done after I was born it was an arrangement of a pre-existing piece.  I hear the director say things like, “we’ll play this piece because everyone will know it”.   Most of the time this is said, I neither know it, nor do I recognize the melody.  I feel attached and not a part of something I can recognize.  This is not to say that I think the old music should be ignored, no matter how much I dislike traditional marches.  I think we should play a wider variety of music that encompasses all eras.  Young people that really aren’t in to band music should have something that is recognizable to them and not just something that there parents kind of remember or their grandparents danced to on their first date.    There needs to be a mixture.   A mixture that should appeal to all those involved.

Rules I would follow to achieve this if I was choosing the music:

1.  Choose at least one movie/television theme song- preferably something recognizable to all ages.   While we are playing Moonriver in the VCMA and I adore, it is not something that the majority of under-forty crowd would recognize.  I think you would have to go to the over fifty crowd to truly appreciate and remember it.  My wife said she would forever be in love and be inspired to work harder at learning an instrument if she hears The Muppet Show Theme Song.  My personal favorite is video game theme music, something as traditional as The Legend of Zelda Theme Song or a number from the Final Fantasy series.   There is a national company that tours and just does live concerts on video game music, it sells out pretty quickly.  These types of concerts have a great deal of appeal to the under forty crowd and that should be taken into consideration.

Some TV themes I would like to hear:

• Batman the Animated Series Theme
• The Muppet Show Theme
• The A-Team Theme
• The Adam’s Family
• The Star Trek Theme
• Farscape Theme
• Benny Hill Theme
• Monty Python’s Circus Theme
• Futurama Theme
• The Incredible Hulk Theme
• Inspector Gadget Theme
• Macgyver Theme
• Mission Impossible Theme
• Quantum Leap Theme
• Bonanza Theme
• Scooby Doo Theme
• Twilight Zone Theme
• X-Files

Movie Themes I would like to hear:

• Anything by John Williams
• Anything by James Horner
• Harry Potter
• Anything large movie made in the last 20 years.

2.  Choose at least one pop arrangement – the VCMA did the Beatles and this would fit into this category.  The real problem with pop music is that so little of it actually sounds good for a concert band.   The fifties and sixties popular songs actually sound the best, though there are a few later pieces that sound quite good also.

3.  Choose one classical piece that easily recognized, so far in neither of my community bands have we tackled any classical music.  We have done some “traditional” pieces, but nothing classical.   Where is the Bach, Beethoven, or Chopin?  There is an abundance of this that has been arranged for concert bands, but the bands I belong to seem to overlook anything pre 1880 and post 1960.  Christmas music doesn’t really fall under “classical”

Out of these 3 areas community bands should be able to play one piece from each of these genre’s through out there year of performing.  I’m not saying it has to follow that one of each of these pieces get played every concert, but out the forty or so pieces I have played in both bands, they should be able to accommodate one of each of these in their play rotation.

There are other rules I would follow also.

4.  No more then 20 percent of your music can come from any decade.  If it was all arranged in the eighties, that’s fine but the melodies and original music was composed according to this guideline.   I’m not going to pick on arrangers for doing a modern arrangement of In the Mood, its swing era song.   With this rule you could also still fit in easily a whole concert and still have music written from before I was born.

5.  No more then 40% from any single genre.  Whether this is marches, swing, classical, theme music, etc., etc. – variety makes more people take notice unless you’re doing a theme concert.

6. Theme concerts (usually X-mas concerts for community bands) – In a theme concert you should play a maximum of 80% of the music that follows the theme.   One or two pieces should be reserved for something unexpected and interesting that doesn’t fit the norm of a particular theme.  Whether this is a Christmas march or a summer playing of Sleigh Ride, the unexpected brings peoples attention by breaking monotony.

7.  While conductors normally choose the music in most circumstances, there should be one or two pieces chosen by the band members themselves to work through and play.   These people are there to have fun, play something they really want to play.

8.  Encourage your members to compose or arrange something for your band to play.  This makes the music all their own and gives your band something special.

That covers my notes from music selection.   So how do you attract new members?   Other then people moving into the community or the rare person finding out about you and showing up, there is little in the means of growth.  Community bands are competing with the Internet, Social Networking, video games, hanging out with friends, going to the bar, or clubbing.   Having lived through my twenties already most of these are more fun at that age then community band.  You need to hook members while they are still young.

I’ve always played for the love of playing.  I really started when I was a sophomore in high school, by my junior year you couldn’t keep me from auditioning or volunteering to play for whatever group was available.  This alone helped me grow into a much better musician.  I used to be able to transpose music from the key of C or the Key of F in my head automatically and play along from that sheet music.   My range and stamina were much better then they are still today.   My technique today is better in a lot of ways, but I feel I was a better player in a larger scope back then.  That was after only a year of playing back then, I have some of that memory still in my head and I’m old enough to have gained wisdom.  My knowledge should have grown.   After my single year of college I stopped playing with any group outside of Alumni band.  It wasn’t out of disinterest as much as effort.   If I didn’t love playing I wouldn’t stay with the community band, there is no one in my peer group and for a large part of it it’s not really “fun”, at least not in the sense it was fun back when I was in high school.

Most players fall off because they are not engaged early enough into the community band cycle.  To give an example what non engagement with playing can do, for alumni band out of the 160 of us that went through 3 years together, only 5 showed up last year to Alumni Band, only two of us regularly play now.  That’s hovering around a 1-2% rate of a player likely to stick with their instrument after school form my personal experience.  Almost all community bands explicitly state that will accept members that are in high school with their band director’s permission.   Now while I would have gladly played with a community band when I was in high school I was not going to go up and have Mr. Henry sign a permission slip or call to ask if I could join the band.   This is a turn off.   What should happen is that community band should be actively engaging the high school and middle school band directors for members every single year.  If community band members are worried about middle schoolers, then they should make a junior community band where the regular band can show up if they so choose and the younger players can show up.

Younger players are looking for people to emulate, to try to sound like.  Having mentoring by accepting is only going to raise their skill level.   Players that show up are not getting school credit, they are not getting paid, and so why have any stipulations.   If the music is too hard for them they are not going to stick around.   If they don’t really enjoy playing and are only in the school for socialization or the fun from that they are not going to show up.   If community bands are there to make its own members better, then the younger the better, they can make the band as a whole be better.  The older players get the benefit of mild teaching and understanding of what they are doing and the younger players gain a mentor.

Once the younger players are hooked they are more likely to stick with music, since they then have a place to play after they graduate.  They will be informed about the community band and will be regular members.   If they are anything like I was they will find a great relief about having some place to play over the summer.  Older members may even make a little bit of side cash by giving lessons, even if they aren’t as good as a true instructor they could still impart wisdom and teach a student to the edge of their abilities, at which point the student could move onto someone else. My high school self could play rings around my present self. I think community bands under estimate the skill levels of these players.

Is there a strong future for community bands?  It depends.   The older generations need to realize that playing in band is not “cool” at least not until your in your thirties, and I still get the occasional snicker about it – I just don’t care.  A community band is considered a tired thing by the younger generation who would prefer most of their live music to contain electric guitars.  The ability to evolve and bring new members in is essential for most community bands to last another twenty years.   Showing players it can be fun by playing music they can identify with and accepting them as peers within their membership.  You could still have a stipulation where the younger members couldn’t vote in elections, I’m sure you wouldn’t want your board run by four sixteen year olds – but having one of them in a position with a voice may give you greater possibilities then someone like me who is already twice that age and out of touch.

I’ve gotten the VCMA website in a stable place.  I can quickly edit it and make changes, so before any radical redesigns I’m now working on moving them over to Google Apps for internal paperwork.  I plan in the near future signing the VCMA up for a Myspace page and a Facebook account.  People in the younger peer group will be able to see it as an organization to identify with.  The older members need to realize why they started a community to begin with, which includes – hanging out with friends, playing for people, becoming better musicians, and having fun.  None of what I have written breaks any of that.  It may take them a little bit out of their comfort zone, but the mantra of business these days is to embrace and extend.   Growth happens once some of these things are followed.  If the bands I play with don’t start embracing this I’m not sure they will last another twenty years and things will get shaky in another ten.   Growth has not continued, but rather it has stagnated, unless there is something done to counter-act this, the downward trend will continue.

In my band I’m still considered just a kid, though my father had his fourth child by my age.   I’m too young to them to be anything but a kid so what do I know.  I’m too old for any of the young people to truly listen to me, plus I’m over thirty so I’m to young to be trusted.  If we go by Cory Doctorow’s book Little Brother – they don’t trust anyone over 22.   Somehow I’m stuck in the adult version of the tweens.  So no one will truly pay attention, but that doesn’t mean this shouldn’t be said.

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]]> http://creeva.com/2008/08/23/is-there-a-strong-future-for-community-bands/feed/ 7 http://creeva.com/2008/08/21/i-admit-it-i-liked-archie-comics-growing-up/ http://creeva.com/2008/08/21/i-admit-it-i-liked-archie-comics-growing-up/#comments Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:56:09 +0000 Creeva http://creeva.com/?p=3084

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I know that I’m a boy and I should have liked high action comics with super heroes and big explosions.  Somehow until I was in my teenage years officially I liked Archie Comics the best.  I’m not going not say that I identified with Archie or anyone else in the comics, I just found them wildly entertaining.  I literally had hundreds of Archie comics (they were dirt cheap at the flea market compared to the action comics that cost 5 times as much).  I had a ton of the digests and “double digests”, though I can say when I see the occasional double digest these days at the super market aisle I am chagrined that it is the size of the old single digest.   What is the single digest a one sheet strip now?   I also can not tell you the last time I saw and actual Archie comic sold in a new comic books rack, though I don’t look that closely these days.

The age old debate that is probably older then Ginger versus Maryanne is Betty or Veronica.  I’m a Betty fan all the way (and Maryanne also).   The down home girl is the one for me in these scenarios.  In 1990 Archie was still still trying to decide between Betty and Veronica in a made for TV movie  Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again that takes place fifteen years after high school.  I can say even though I was fourteen when it came out I was excited and watched it when it came out.  I video taped it and watched it again and again.   This reminds me I need to hunt down a copy of that now.

Enjoy a couple clips from the TV movie:

My grandfather, I loved him, but when I was a young kid I really didn’t enjoy his choice in television programming.  Grandpa had cable, so he had all the cool channels I could get at home with our normal broadcast television.   I wanted to watch You Can’t Do That on Television or Danger Mouse.   Grandpa had other ideas.

Grandpa like watching war documentaries, to an eight year old I might as well have been wwatching paint job.  Since it was a 4 hour ride to Grandpa’s house that meant it was normally a big trip.  Big trips meant I couldn’t bring alot of stuff with me, so TV was the entertainment (though I read quite a few books on trips to Grandpa’s house).   Not only did Grandpa watch war documentaries incessantly he also fell asleep watching TV quite often (an affliction my wife says I have also).   This means that the TV was stuck on war documentaries and the only person that cared about them was asleep and not enjoying them.   So no concious person in the room was enjoying the television.  Dilemnas, Dilemnas.

So being a young child I discovered if I turned down the volume on the TV and then changed the channel, I could then raise the volume slowly and listen and watch whatever I wanted – until Grandpa woke up.  So we had 15-20 minutes of TV in between him waking up and changing the channel back to what he was watching.

I did this for years and eventually most of my cousins caught on also.