Tales too tedious to type

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January 4, 2008 7:40 am

Bongloxes

July 17, 2007 4:48 pm

Oh hey, look! It’s the ultimate volume of Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid. This is a very fun series, and if you don’t like it you’re a crazy person, so go back to Crazy Town, Mister Crazy!

…but it’s not an actual disc. It’s a stout laminated cardboard sleeve that houses the plastic keepcase which contains the disc. What exactly is the purpose of these things? A couple of years ago, these weren’t a factor, but now it seems like every second or third DVD has them, even things that aren’t meant to be special editions. As near as I can tell, they have no obvious purpose– they only create an extra thing to throw away. They’ve actually complicated the DVD packaging process, as the first few waves of DVDs to feature these things had them sitting on the outside of the shrinkwrap. After enterprising cheapskates started swapping the contents for other, more expensive DVDs, the manufacturers wised up, and now these things are shrinkwrapped with the rest of the disc, which means I can’t even throw them out in the parking lot like I used to.

To me, they seem like a modern day analogue to longboxes. Longboxes were phased out in no small part due to environmental concerns– a huge waste of paper, resulting in a piece of cardboard that would invariably get thrown out. The thing is, I feel no outrage over dead trees because of these things, I just hate having another damn thing to throw away. So, why are we back in this mess again? While I’m asking, why the hell does Costco specifically manufacture and use old-style longboxes? It’s what keeps me from buying any DVDs there, that’s for sure.

Categories: Uncategorized
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Infocomm

July 7, 2007 11:30 am

Categories: Technology
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Going live

June 5, 2007 9:41 pm

I’ve had an amusing little problem with my home network, and I think I may have solved it tonight.

See, for months, I’ve had two networkable appliances in my living room– a series two Tivo, and an Xbox 360. I was content with not using their online capabilities for some time, but for the past week, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get them connected. The cable modem ordinarily lives in the study, which is separated from my living room by the kitchen. I don’t want to run ethernet cables across the house, and there’s very limited access to the basement via the study, so I can’t string cable through that way.

And then it hit me– I could just move the cable modem and router to the living room. One $25 wireless NIC (for my desktop) later, I had the stuff moved, and I’m already reaping the benefits. I’m signed up for Xbox live (gamertag: miketoole) and am now able to update the Tivo’s programming remotely. I am seriously digging the Xbox Live arcade, which already has a number of good games (including a startlingly vector-smoothed version of Double Dragon) with more on the way (Pac-Man Championship comes out tomorrow!).

Even more interestingly, I can now stream movies from my desktop box to the Xbox. After spending about two hours fumbling around with both the Windows Media Extender and an ugly thing called TVersity, I got this feature working using a neat little program called ORB which worked right out of the box. Now, I’m watching a beloved classic (Macross: Do You Remember Love), which scales up and looks great on my living room TV. Beats sitting at a desk or having to burn stuff to CD any day of the week!

The only remaining problem is the fact that my desktop box has a radically slower connection (usually in the 18Mbps range), so I won’t be able to siphon those movies and TV shows from the net quite as fast, not to mention that the stream to the Xbox itself hiccups occasionally. Oh well, I can always make a high gain antenna out of a Pringles can.

Categories: Uncategorized
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A good four months

May 30, 2007 10:00 am

Yeah, yeah, I’ve been bad about keeping up, I’m a slacker, etc. etc. Honestly I never expected to be as busy as I have been– this is my first ‘real’ day off since May 8th, so I figured I’d give the ol’ blog an update.

My convention obligations are done and dusted (Katsucon and Anime Boston were both extremely successful and well-attended, with the latter breaking the 10,000 attendee mark on Friday), and I’ve got one business trip (Chicago) in the can and one (Anaheim) coming up next month. As referenced in that lonely post four months ago, I will be at InfoComm, albeit only for a day or so. Still, I look forward to putting names to faces with some of my colleagues at places like VER and Christie.

I’ll have more updates later in the week; my life has been a blur of work, work, and the occasional soccer game, and I’m still sorting through the debris.

Categories: The usual crap
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New Spamsterdam

January 28, 2007 8:31 am

Well, that didn’t take long. I’ve received about 30 comments in the past week, all of them from spambots. I do moderate comments (IMO it’s the only way to easily clamp down on the crap– even image verification can be circumvented, as my buddies at Anime World Order discovered a couple of weeks back), but that doesn’t prevent the bots from submitting remarks and me getting a junk email notifying me of such.

Absurdly, one of the spambots always says “Sorry for this message,” before spewing dozens of porn links. Aw, thanks pal! Don’t worry Mr. Spaminator, you may be creating extra work for me and filling my inbox with crap, but since you’re sorry we’re all square.

We’re three weeks out from Katsucon. I’ll be running the video program at the event; hopefully, the schedule I created will be posted on the website soon. Fortunately, I will actually have staff at this event (my lack of experience and very late arrival on convention staff last year resulted in a bumpy weekend with very little sleep), even if certain JERKBAGS have decided that things like rest, job security, and financial health matter more than sitting in the dark watching Tekkaman Blade. Oh well, maybe next time.

It’s been an interesting year for me and conventions, as I’ve ditched my usual role of panelist-guest and karaoke MC to take slightly greater, behind-the-scenes responsibilities at a couple of events. I find myself wanting to hit Anime Central this May, but my travel schedule (which will probably involve a jaunt to InfoComm) is bloated as it is. Still, I find myself wondering how the 10th iteration of the convention I was a founding member of (I was involved from the planning stages in 1995, and staffed between 1998 and 2005) will play out. I’m hoping that someone will take up the karaoke baton this year, as it apparently didn’t happen (except for a very limited, American Idol-esque event) last time.

Speaking of Tekkaman Blade, the anti-Steve Harrison conspiracy has been thwarted at least temporarily, because I’ve got the first DVD set in my hot little hands. It’s gorgeous– a gatefold package with 16 episodes spread over 3 discs. If you love action and you love 80s anime, there’s no reason to avoid getting it. I’ll be posting some pictures later today.

Categories: Uncategorized
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Not down with HDCP (yeah you know me)

January 10, 2007 10:10 pm

While my new TV is pretty awesome, I’m finding myself experiencing the same problem reported earlier here. My living room DVD player is a Samsung DVD-R135, a Divx-playing DVD recorder which happens to sport an HDMI output and can up-convert DVD to 1080i. But sure enough, on most DVDs (i.e. pretty much everything that is not from ADV Films) the picture blinks off as soon as the disc is inserted. I’ve been doing some reading to get to the bottom of this issue, and it appears that the problem has to do with HDCP, the latest and greatest copy protection scheme for HD media devices. Obviously, my (relatively) old Xerox 17″ LCD monitor was not going to be HDCP-compliant, but I’d imagine that my new TV is. But after trying both HDMI inputs with no luck, I’m not sure what the deal is. Maybe a firmware upgrade is in the cards.

I can’t stand these lame copy protection schemes, especially when they end up keeping me from watching stuff that I paid for. I was gratified when, a couple of weeks ago, muslix64 successfully cracked HD-DVD’s copy protection scheme. Now, it’s not a simple process (it requires a key that you must obtain yourself), but it’s a start– soon we’ll be ripping our HD-DVDs to our laptop hard drives so we can watch movies on the plane without killing the battery. As far as I’m concerned, there is no damn reason to keep people from doing stuff like this. Irritatingly, the otherwise intriguing Windows Vista is loaded with all kinds of protection schemes to keep you from importing and managing content in HD, which is part of the reason why I’ll be removing the OS from my laptop tomorrow. It’s cute, but frankly, there’s not a whole lot that I enjoy doing on the laptop which Windows XP doesn’t handle just fine.

My man Clint Dempsey has completed a $4 million move to Fulham FC in the English Premier League, already home to fellow yanks Brian McBride and Carlos Bocanegra. I’ve been watching Deuce play since the start of his professional career, and it was easy to see this move coming– the man is a player of rare style and creativity, and I hope he goes far.

Categories: The usual crap, Technology
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Legos for adults

January 8, 2007 10:15 pm

…that’s what I was thinking of while I haunted the PVC pipe section of the Home Depot, looking for the necessary half-inch pipe lengths and fittings to use on some ridiculous light-box project. Of course, this assumes that real Legos are not for adults, which would be an incorrect assumption. Legos are for everyone. Even virtual Legos. The most important lesson that my trip yielded, however, is the fact that my wife is much better at sawing out pipe lengths than I am. According to According to Jim (god, I’ve always wanted to say that) I should feel emasculated by this, but somehow I don’t.

I actually completed the light box, thereby achieving my long-standing dream of being able to photograph small items as though they were hanging, suspended, in a field of blue construction paper. Yes, that is a Motorola Arch– remember them? I sure as hell don’t, though I’m told that they were all the rage in the late nineties. My boss foolishly gave me his old unit, believing it to be worthless. I know better– it should be easy to turn that old junk into $10 or $20 via the magic of eBay. What’s amazing to me is that it still functions, and still receives updates over-the-air– when I first swapped in a fresh battery and turned it on, expecting NO NETWORK or some nonsense, it immediately started buzzing excitedly with news of the latest football scores.

Here’s a photo of what the light box looks like. Looks like a fire hazard, doesn’t it? I’ll need a second front light (Home Depot was out of ‘em), but I’ve got one solid front light and an old track light providing light from above, killing excess shadow. Total cost of materials for this was something like $20, which beats the heck out of the $50-plus you’ll spend on a professional fabricated light box. Plus, the PVC frame collapses in seconds!

Here’s a shot showing off the downlight, which is handily hooked on to the handlebar of my Langster. It sits there perfectly; it’s uncanny.

Speaking of football, I yielded to my avaricious love of gadgets and sprung for an HDTV. It’s an LG 32LC2DU, a 32″ LCD set with a pretty high contrast ratio, two HDMI inputs, and a QAM tuner. The tuner is a great unheralded feature of HDTV if you’ve got cable, because it actually displays unencrypted digital cable channels. This won’t open up regular digital cable to you, but it does mean you’ll get to watch a range of good mostly-local HD channels. Upon first powering up the set, I immediately found an on-demand airing of Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Not bad, not bad, but not as good as watching the Gators whip the living crap out of Ohio State in 1080i. I don’t care much about college football, but it was hard to look away from this stuff– it has me pretty eager for the first MLS game on HDNet this spring.

Overall, it’s a great replacement for my old TV, and I expect that it’ll be at least eight to ten days before I start dreaming of upgrading to a 50″ plasma TV.

Categories: The usual crap, Technology
6 Comments »

Format doormat

January 4, 2007 10:15 am

Earlier this week I noted, on my brother’s blog, that I was reluctant to commit to a next-generation video player (either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD) until players that could read both formats hit the market. I gave a ballpark figure of five years for this to happen. Turns out it’s gonna be a lot sooner. Granted, I’d heard rumblings about NEC developing a drive that could read both formats last year, but figured it was still several years away from the reach of the consumer. Guess I won’t be needing that Xbox HD-DVD player addon; thanks, LG!

Personally, I think the new formats have come upon us too quickly. DVD offered a range of obvious benefits over VHS, but the benefits to these two next-gen formats aren’t quite as obvious, particularly when you have large segments of the population rushing out to buy HDTVs and then being satisfied with plugging their regular cable box in. My mom did this, and there’s a bit more on the phenomenon at John C. Dvorak’s blog.

The reason I’m interested is because I, like many others, am shopping for one of those newfangled HDTVs. I know that I want something slim, so tube, projection and DLP HDTVs are right out. That leaves me with either plasma or LCD. I love the truer blacks and rich, saturated colors of plasma, but the monitors are heavier, more expensive, and consume much more electricity. So I’ve been on the lookout for a cheapo LCD unit to play with. Microcenter had a neat little HD-ready 23″ Olevia set for $349, but then I noticed this one, a significantly larger monitor with built-in tuners for just a few dollars more. It was out of stock at the two nearest stores to my house, so I called up my friend, translator extraordinaire Neil Nadelman, and we hopped in the Nadelmobile and dashed down to Braintree to have a look at one of these sets.

That 12-mile drive took more than two hours because of this unfortunate business, a car crash that turned a huge black SUV into a giant hunk of metal shredded wheat; it was still on the road when we passed. When I got there, I was told that the last set had been sold about an hour before. Curses! Foiled again. I was later nearly tempted by this set, a 37-inch Olevia which would have cost me $599 after a rebate and a pricematch, but the barbarian Fatwallet horde pointed out that both discounts were notoriously unreliable. Fortunately, getting back on the fence will really just save me money; LCD TVs are in high demand, but they’re also in high supply, so prices will continue to drop.

Anyone else made the HDTV jump yet?

Categories: Technology
7 Comments »

Out with the old, in with the old, only burned to DVD

January 1, 2007 11:46 pm

Look at this.

That’s right, it’s an entire garbage can full of VHS tapes. It represents my youth, my hopes, and my dreams.

Seriously, it’s all the weird old anime VHS I’ve been holding on to– dubs that time forgot, mostly, and other rarities. But I’ve got all that stuff burned to DVD now, so there’s no reason to continue keeping it. Sure, I know that DVD-Rs don’t have a tremendously long shelf life, but I’m figuring on having most of the discs I own ripped and stored to another backup medium sometime in the next few years, as solid-state stuff gets cheaper and higher capacity.

The cases and faces are blank, because I’ve hung on to all the inserts and artwork. Those are going to get scanned and preserved for future generations. In the meantime, today I did indeed throw away my last two VHS tapes. The first was a tape containing the Muteking pilot and some Marine Boy episodes, courtesy of Dave Merrill. The stuff had been copied too many times, I needed to time-base correct it, but I did that this morning. The other tape was an oddity– the fruits of a “Dub yer own anime” panel from Otakon ‘98. Of course, this being the age of Web 2.0 BABY NARROWCAST MY VLOG TO THE BLOGOSPHERE!!!, there was nothing for me to do but put the thing on YouTube so you could all watch it. It was a tricky affair– the physical tape had snapped, requiring some open-cassette surgery and a little scotch tape. But I got it, and here it is.

Yes, my voice is in there. Multiple times, in fact. The footage is fron Shinesman. I’m left with one question: why don’t more conventions do “Dub yer own” panels? Granted, the best ones I’ve encounted have involved full ProTools setups and both a director and an audio engineer (in this case, Scott Houle and Scott Simpson), but I also have fond memories of AnimEast ’95’s “dub your own anime” panel, which involved Toshi Yoshida, a videotape with only music and effects to a Ranma episode, and a TV/VCR. We stood in front of the TV and read the script aloud, no mics, just goofing around, and it was pretty great. Nowadays, you can get entire Gatchaman episodes with no dialogue from the ADV Films DVDs, so dammit, I expect someone to run with this!Oh, and I will be publishing a list of all the crap I’ve burned to DVD at some point. I just need to take my time and make sure I format it exactly like this guy’s tape lists.

Categories: Animation
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