BillSaysThis

I’ve been remiss the last few weeks in putting down my writeups in Bill’s Movie Reviews so I added seven new entries this weekend, the last twice due to a server-side hiccup:

• Firewall – moderately watchable
• Deep Impact – very good
• Havoc – bad, really bad
• Last Action Hero – funny and watchable
• Four Brothers – very good
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – twisted good, better than the Gene Wilder version by far
• Everything is Illuminated – spike in forehead bad

Yes, I watch a lot of movies. I also watched and was disappointed by Arsenal’s win at the death over Manchester United this morning and the Bears’ easy win over the Saints in the NFC championship this afternoon. Glad to see the Patriots score first, at least, and while I don’t wish injuries to any athlete, the timing of in-form Gunners striker Robin van Persie’s broken metatarsal is a bit of good news for my Reds.

Related: My five year old blog post Rex Grossman is not Jewish is apparently a destination of choice for web surfers wondering if the Bears’ quarterback is, in fact, Jewish bringing in 77 of the last 100 page views recorded by SiteMeter.

In a crucial Barclays English Premier League home match today the Reds took cruel advantage of Chelsea’s injury troubles and squad disarray to score twice in the opening 18 minutes. The first goal came from Dirk Kuyt, off Peter Crouch’s foot, and soon after Jermaine Pennant got his first goal for the club with a dipping blast from the right side of the penalty area.

Peter Cech made an early return from his fractured skull, wearing an ungainly head protector, but Jose Mourinho had to start Michael Essien and Paulo Ferreira in central defense as Khalid Boulahrouz has a knee injury, Ricardo Carvalho took ill over night and John Terry’s back has still not recovered while left back Wayne Bridge also has a knee problem and Claude Makele was suspended from cards, and the Reds came out blasting against the improvised defensive core. Winger Arjen Robben had to leave after 20 minutes after twisting an ankle.

Today was Rafa Benitez’s 100th EPL game so he knew the opening minutes were critical and had the team prepared. The precious three points pulls the ‘Pool within five points of the Blues in the standings, only one behind in the goal difference tiebreaker, and leave a visit from hated Gunners at the end of March and a trip to Old Trafford two weeks later as the only remaining Big Four matchups.

The next three games, before the boys travel to Spain for the first leg of their Champions League tussle with Ronaldinho’s Barcelona, are West Ham, a derby with Everton and Newcastle could yield 7-9 points if current form holds. Defeating the Spanish champions could give the team a real boost towards a second European trophy in three seasons!

After reading the excerpt Karl posted from Dr. King’s speech Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution and Dan’s brief rumination I feel very sad. To go back 40 years and see that so little has changed, in fact the change there’s been has gone in the wrong direction, is truly disheartening.

I can only imagine that the cost per dead terrorist is far higher, even adjusted for inflation, than the $500k King cites from the Vietnam era though I suppose the political achievements are and will be similar. That is, nothing good will come of this adventure, not security nor better lives for the vast majority of Iraqis, Afghanis or Americans.

A friend emailed this link to Dr. King’s I Have a Dream speech, if you want to feel the passion and promise he offered in depth.

To promote top-rated CSI: Crime Scene Investigation for the month that Gil Grissom (William Peterson) is off doing a play in Chicago, the show is bringing in a mysterious cop character and to go along with the storyline CBS has put together a nice website called Who is Keppler? The site has user-contributed video mashups, tagging, rating, friend lists, Google Map of registered user locations and mobile content and is built with Palo Alto-based Ning.

We’ve had the Olevia 37″ LCD TV and Comcast HD DVR settop box for nearly three weeks now and I think its time to put down my thoughts. Short story: Love the sharper HD channels (plus the bigger picture on the rest) and the settop box’s dual tuners, hate with a passion the Comcast onscreen guide and am fairly unhappy with the pair losing the HDCP authorization handshake.

Once again I find myself quite unhappy at purchasing a big ticket item from Fry’s due to their completely crappy customer service. On January 2 I had another reason to stop by the store so I also tried to get an answer on whether this HDCP issue is just “the way it is” or if there’s something incorrectly setup or configured. No one in the TV or service departments had a clue and said my only option was a service call, which I did; their ancient software required that I fill out a form with information they already have in the computer and then wait 15 minutes for it to be input.

The service counter rep said I would get a call by the next day to schedule the visit since Fry’s uses a third party provider but when no call came by Thursday I called back and was told no, the scheduling call isn’t due for three days and, in fact, the ticket hadn’t even been assigned to a service company yet. Monday lunchtime arrived with no call so I called Fry’s again and was told that the ticket still wasn’t assigned.

The service counter rep, same one who took my report six days before, called me back after speaking with the central office to investigate. Fry’s, he said, does not actually have a company in this area to service this TV but since less than 30 days have passed from my purchase my only options are to return the set or live with the problem.

The $50 two year extended warranty I purchase includes in-home service so I asked that someone bring the new set here and retrieve the old one. Not surprisingly the rep claimed that product exchanges within the 30 days do not qualify for in-home service and the charge for home delivery is $40.

After I pointed out several times that Fry’s had sold me a service contract the company could not honor (smells illegal to me, which I explained would have me calling the Better Business Bureau and the Santa Clara County Consumer Protection Unit, eh?) he conferred with his manager and they agreed to make the delivery the next morning at no cost. Of course the new set has exactly the same issue. What a huge pain when all I wanted was to speak with a qualified tech to see if I could make a change to correct this or not. But that’s Fry’s for you and something I really need to keep in mind for future non-trivial purchases.

There’s also a problem on the Comcast side: two HD channels, Universal HD and MTV HD, won’t show because the box thinks I’m not authorized. Phone support couldn’t fix it and a visit from a service tech was no better; I don’t quite understand how this can be a box-level issue but that’s the explanation. I have to bring the box in for an exchange since the tech didn’t have the right one in his truck–the second gen DVRs only have DVI and component output but I need to use HDMI since the DVD player occupies the TV’s component jacks.

Replacing the box would cost me the already-recorded shows so I still haven’t turned it in. It will also mean all my series subscriptions and other scheduled recordings, plus my channel favorites list got blown away when phone support tried to fix the problem. Another pain in the backside.

Given that the settop box, like my beloved old TiVo, is a computer I have to wonder why neither Comcast nor TiVo offers a backup feature. Not for recorded shows but just for all the settings. How much space and bandwidth could it use? After all, we’re just talking about a few K of highly compressible text per box and the customer convenience factor would be huge. Even better would be to send a delta update after each change or newly scheduled recording.

On the bright side, at the Consumer Electronics Show this week Comcast and TiVo demonstrated the fruits of the partership they touted last year to bring TiVo’s software to Comcast DVR boxes. This will go a long way to making me happy because the current Comcast onscreen guide/DVR software really bites. Neither the phone support rep, the tech who visited me nor the press releases from either company offer any date when I can get this, and I hope the fee won’t be more than $4-5/month since the DVR already costs $10/month, but you can be sure I’m chomping at the bit.

Also good was the FCC’s decision turning down a request by Comcast to continue to require its subscribers use its own television set-top boxes rather than meet a July 1 deadline for cable operators and consumer electronics companies to use compatible technology for television delivery when building such boxes. This means that when a customer subscribes to a particular service, they may request an external cable card which can be inserted into the box to receive service. For once some support for consumers.

Scorecard

• Fry’s: F
• Comcast: C+, possibly moving up to a B+/A- if the TiVo service comes soon
• Olevia: C

• FA Cup: Liverpool 1-3 Arsenal, the title defense ends on the first outing.
• Carling Cup: Liverpool 1-3 Arsenal, third worst home defeat ever, though I will note that the starting squad only included three of our first choice XI, Hyypia, Gerrard and Bellamy, while Arsenal used four or five of theirs
• Injuries: Luis Garcia and his magic lost for the season (torn ACL) after coming on in the 11th minute for Mark Gonzalez (often on the field when Luis Garcia is not), out for three weeks, who left with a shin injury.

Silver linings

• Better rested players for Premiership (next up, at Watford on Saturday and home to Chelsea–NOT on FSC, dammit–a week later) and Champions League matches (Next up, home and away with Barcelona in late February and early March).
• Injuries: We ought to get Zenden back at the weekend and Sissoko for the first match in February, a derby with Everton. While StevieG may not like it I expect he will be moved back to the right so Sissoko can play hard man in the center.
• Transfers: First deal in the window nets a young Italian keeper called Daniele Padelli on loan from Serie A Sampdoria, though I’m not clear why since he hasn’t pushed his way into the starting lineup while on loan at Serie B club Crotone. Rumors are rampant that serious bids have been made to buy Blackburn/Australia defender Lucas Neill and Hamilton Academical teenage midfielder Jamie Macarthy, the Reds are targeting young Watford star striker Ashley Young and that Argentine star (but so far no big deal at West Ham) midfielder Javier Mascherano has rejected the renewed interest of Juventus to hold out for a move to Anfield. Meanwhile, Aston Villa want to steal Craig Bellamy, who only arrived in the summer, and Newcastle think Peter Crouch can be the solution to their striker woes. Only 20 trading days left!

Let’s not forget that the team is still third in the Premier League and Manchester United and (especially) Chelsea have faltered just a wee bit in recent weeks, with the Reds just eight points back of the Blues and a crucial three points that can be made up on January 20.

Walter Mosley writes about a world completely outside my experience, even though his settings are (generally) America in the years just before and after my own birth. But I’ve never been black nor lived deep in the urban neighborhoods of his stories and so the emotions and attitudes expressed are as alien as the far-future humans of Iain Banks. Here’s an example, from Easy Rawlins’ narrative (p. 106):

“I had reached out for the white man’s brass ring and got caught up short, that’s all. They taught me when I was a boy to stay in my place. I was a fool for forgetting that lesson, and now all I was doing was paying for that foolishness.“

(Previous Mosley writeups: White Butterfly, The Wave, Fortunate Son)

Black Betty covers an episode in 1961 in which Easy is hired to track down Elizabeth Eady, the title character, after she goes missing from a wealthy woman’s estate where Eady’d worked for 25 years. There are, of course, complications: from the color of his skin, the police (corrupt and otherwise), lies and misdirections and even the threat of danger to his informally adopted children.

Further troubling him are the release of best friend Mouse from prison after five years, because Mouse is going to kill somebody for turning him in–maybe even Easy, if no other candidate is found–and an attempt to swindle him out of his modest but meaningful real estate holdings (leading to the quote cited above). And above all, the man is simply weary, tired to the bone from life’s battering.

While this is not the best Mosley I’ve read, Black Betty is still very good, entertaining and educational and thought provoking.

recommended

We’ve been taking care of Dinger Dog, our friends’ black lab this weekend, and having fun. He’s nine years old and very well-behaved, although the parade of dachsunds we encountered while walking him in downtown Los Altos yesterday morning generated a bit of growling. Dinger’s going home tonight but not before we take him the dog park at Shoreline Park this afternoon. TS1, of course, is thrilled but even more anxious for us to get (two of) our own.

Dinger says he was just as disappointed as me at Liverpool’s 3-1 loss to Arsenal, dropping us from defending our FA Cup title at the first confrontation. Here’s a photo of us commiserating at the dog park:

After a few years I was inspired once again to make a tracking page for the NFL head coaching changes, probably because of the quick trigger firing of Denny Green and the liar liar pants on fire behavior of Nick Saban. Page will be updated as more changes, departures and hirings, come down the tubes:

2006-07 CoachingGoRound

(Previous CoachingGoRounds: 2001-02 2002-03 2003-04)

Note that the Matt Millen watch is on, once again, despite his apparent retention of the Lions presidency as Detroit have, by far, the worst record in the league over his entire seven year tenure.

Wired Mag has a brief look back at the highlights of Luc Besson’s directorial career in response to Besson’s announcement that Arthur and the Invisibles will be the last time he sits in the director’s chair.

While its true that this big budget animation is based on the series of bestselling children’s books Besson himself wrote, I’m truly disappointed that he won’t bring his magic to one last action flick. Here are my almost uniformly positive writeups on two Besson-directed movies:Leon (aka The Professional) and The Fifth Element.

While I have’t written a review, since I watched it many times prior to starting this blog, his 1990 movie La Femme Nikita is one of my all time favorites. He nearly singlehandedly created the female ass-kicking heroine drama with it, all due ackowledgement to Sigourney Weaver and Alien. Good enough to be remade by Hollywood as Point of No Return with Bridget Fonda in the Anne Parillaud title role and then expanded into the made for syndication/cable TV series of the same name, LFN inspired many movies, video games and TV shows (think Alias, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or 24—from the creative team behind the LFN TV version— would have been made if not for this?).

So I really would love to see one more head-pounding, leg-breaking, big boom flick with Luc Besson in complete control.

This 2002 novel probably doesn’t belong on the science fiction shelf, where I found it in the MV Public Library, but fortunately for me it was. Barely falling within the alternate history/multiverse genres, The Separation by Christopher Priest is really more of a (successful) literary experiment set in England before and during World War II. The Daily Telegraph agreed in its review, writing: “It becomes clear that Priest is attempting something far more intellectually ambitious than a mere alternative history. In a story entitled The Garden of Forking Paths, Borges imagined a book encompassing all possible outcomes, an image of a universe that is a “growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times.” The Separation very nearly is that book.”

The story is simple enough, concerning idential twin brothers who make the British team for the 1936 Olymics in Berlin and win the bronze in coxless pairs. There was no residential village in those years and the boys stayed at the apartment of the family who were close friend’s with their parents; their mother is German and has been close friends since childhood with the wife. The twins each fall in love with the 17 year old daughter, silently, neither willing to speak of it.

The family, though, is Jewish and realize they must get out of Germany and the boys become involved with the plan. Also while in Berlin, one of the twins–who both have the initials JL, one called JL and the other Joe–meets Nazi leader Rudolph Hess at a post-race British Embassy reception.

On their return home JL resumes undergrad life at Oxford, learning to fly planes in the university’s air club, while Joe drops out to work. When the war breaks out JL becomes an office in the RAF but Joe registers as a consciencious objector and drives a Red Cross ambulence helping survivors of the nightly German bombing runs.

These factors form the basis for Priest’s experimentation. His work is subtle, fracturing and reversing the sense of time, leaving outcomes unresolved and even confusing his own characters’ sens of reality. The Separation is sophisticated and imaginative and I enjoyed it so much that I spent all day last Thursday and half of Friday reading it.

recommended

I’m pretty crap with predictions, except in gest, so I won’t trouble you with a batch that are as likely as an elephant knocking on my second story door tomorrow morning.

Instead, to all my friends, loved ones and readers, I will send my traditional wish:

May this coming year be the best of your life so far, and yet the least of all the many yet to come.

Thank you for your friendship, love or simple interest, all important and appreciated by me.

Unfortunately it’s too late and not in a positive light (TechCrunch, Rubel). Both the top tier bloggers picked up on a brief story in Ha’aretz, the major Israeli daily paper, that RawSugar has run out of money, laid off the staff and has been unable to sell the company or its major assets.

Unfortunately the reports are true. I’m unhappy because we had a great team, really good technology and sufficient funding to get to the second milestone (public availability of our product being the first and 75-100k active users, enough to justify a venture round) but for reasons I’m still not quite clear on, we never did get to that level of active use.

I’m surprised that none of the companies we spoke to about an acquisition the last few months made a real offer, because all of them would have benefited from adding our technology to their products. Using tags or labels with small hierarchical groupings is an important improvement for the second level of search and our tech would be a fast way to get there.

RawSugar had a terrific team, if a small one. TwoThree of our key engineering staff have been hired as part of the first group of employees of a new Google Israel lab (don’t ask me what they’re working on since they won’t tell me ;), as has our Haifa office manager. Our VP Engineering, Frank Smadja, has a brilliant understanding of language and semantics and will surely land easily. Our other engineers and our QA manager, I haven’t heard their plans yet but expect to be impressed when I do. Well, our QA Manager is due to give birth to her second child around the end of January and that ought to keep her happily occupied for quite some time, eh?

Our CEO/Founder, Ofer Ben Shachar, is a serial entrepreneur and after taking time to recharge batteries and get his new house complete will undoubtedly start another innovative company–I worked for him at NetDynamics and would join him again in a heartbeat. Working closely with Ofer for two years has been quite an education for me, enabling me to be involved in nearly every aspect of a startup. Also contributing substantially to my education were our bizdev manager Chris Fede and key advisor Dan Seligson.

RawSugar may be in the… well I can’t bring myself to type Mike’s group name but I have no regrets about joining or anything we did.

This does mean that I’m available for a new opportunity, short or long term, if you have an exciting product in the consumer internet or enterprise space. I’ve done big companies as well as startups and can operate effectively and comfortably in both environments. I can help you improve your customer experience in the form of community building and evangelism, product marketing/product management, or managing technical support.

Ofer and Frank will be happy to give you a good reference.

Got this as a throw in with the Olevia TV from Fry’s and have no need for it. Would cost you $100 or more from what I can tell online or in a store but I’ll let it go for $60. Cash or Bank Check/Cashier’s Check only, no Paypal, personal checks or credit card, and you have to pick up from me in Mountain View or nearby.

Craig’s List ad

Sony Product Page

A good post-holiday deal.

I’ll ship it to you (only within the US or Canada) but you have to cover the cost of packaging and shipping and my bank must confirm that your bank/cashier check has cleared before I send it out. My estimate–ESTIMATE–is that shipping will cost a minimum of $15 for UPS Ground (5-7 day) delivery.

Update, two hours later: Wow, that was fast! A nice man contacted me from the CL posting and we agreed to $50, I met him at the Mickey D’s by 101, he gave me the cash I gave him the box and am home again. This is why people love Craig’s List.

Why, don’t you want my two cents? Note that these are all chosen from what I’ve watched, done, seen or heard this year rather than what was released in 2006. So while, say, Clint Eastwood may win another Oscar for his WWII movie (or his other WWII movie) I didn’t see either so they aren’t in the candidate pool.

Moment (personal): My sister and brother-in-law walking in the door of my parents’ house with my nephew Jacob, the first time we got to meet the little guy.

Moment (technical/business): Going to Pasadena in January for the Rails Studio class. Honorable Mention: Gnomedex in Seattle, Eric Banhamou’s presentation at the July JHTC meeting.

Moment (political): Election Night, particularly watching CNN while in SeaTac waiting for my flight home from a job interview at Microsoft. Despite not getting an offer from MSFT.

Moment (sports): Liverpool winning the FA Cup after falling two goals behind, lead by Steven Gerrard’s offense and Pepe Reina’s goalkeeping.

Disappointment: Our troops are still dying in Iraq, Afghanistan is falling apart (with Somalia, the Sudan and Nigeria close behind), North Korea has several nuclear weapons and Iran is close behind and GW Bush is still president. The US team’s completely crap performance at the World Cup and USC’s last minute loss to Texas in the BCS Championship.

Purchase: Easily LittleSteven, my new MacBook, nothing else came close, which was driven home by the few days I had to go back to my WinXP Toshiba when this puppy had to go for service. Honorable Mentions: iBackup from Grapefruit Software, although since this is free/open source software I didn’t purchase it, and TextMate from Macromates, which did cost Eu40.

Gift: The longsleeve Liverpool FC jersey TS1 gave me for Hanukah and the continuing generosity of my parents.

TV comedy: Eureka (SciFi) was funny throughout its first season with good use of science fiction elements in the mystery and a very good Colin Ferguson as the fish out of water sheriff and Family Guy (Fox) was the best 30 minute show on any network. Honorable Mentions: Robot Chicken (Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim) and Viva Blackpool, a limited run musical/comedy/crime story mashup. Simpsons and Monk are still funny but not at their peak; Monk especially seems to have gotten into a rut and will need to pick it up in the winter season premiering in three weeks or lose me.

TV science fiction: Heroes (NBC) has come out of nowhere to show that major network scifi can be well done. Battlestar Galactica is still quality but the producers seem to have lost their way in regards to the bigger picture, similarly The 4400 (USA). Doctor Who is fun to watch but not first rank. Long in the tooth watchlist: both Stargates, though SG-1 is wrapping up after the winter season.

TV drama: The Wire (HBO) did a nearly complete reset this season but got terrific scripts from well-known mystery novelists like Dennis Lehane and Richard Price and consistently strong pacing from the stabl of directors. Mystery Monday (BBC America) brought us some outstanding British series including Life on Mars, Eleventh Hour, Wire in the Blood and Waking the Dead (but not all were worthy: Vincent and Murphy’s Law didn’t keep my interest for even one full episode). Honorable Mentions for Deadwood, 24, Dexter, Murder City and The Sopranos. Long in the tooth watchlist: the original CSI and CSI: Miami, the original Law & Order (when Jerry Orbach died, maybe the show should have too, though I still watch) and ER, which I did stop watching at least four years ago.

Movie comedy: Stranger than Fiction was strange, fictional and twistingly funny, best movie performance by Will Ferrell. Honorable Mention: Find Me Guilty. Classic: Eddie and the Cruisers.

Movie drama: An Inconvenient Truth may be a documentary but its also extremely dramatic and important as real life events continue to show (such as a 66 square kilometer ice shelf snapping off an island in the Candian Arctic). Honorable Mention: Hotel Rwanda. Classic: The Great Escape.

Book: Charlie Stross’s Accelerando was an amazing take on the Singularity and clearly my top read while Iain Banks was new (to me) author of the year, beginning with Look to Windward. I only seem to have read two non-fiction books but even so Jack Weatherford’s Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World is worth your time to understand one of the least well understood transformative figures of the Middle Ages.

Blog: Daring Fireball by John Gruber (note that I’m limiting myself to blogs which I first started reading this year), who I will support as soon as I start getting a paycheck again so I can get his Linked List RSS feed.

My 2006 sports predictions had some surprisingly good picks: Italy in the World Cup finals against a team that was not named Brazil, Germany or USA (though they won); Barcelona did win La Liga and the Champions League and beat an English club in the CL final; Chelsea won the EPL with Man United and Liverpool second and third and Arsenal capturing fourth on the last day of the season after a suspicious rash of food posioning struck Tottenham, the team ahead of them until that game. USC did not beat Texas in the BCS Championship game but Leinart, Bush and Vince Young did all go in the top 10 11 draft picks and both teams were in the preseason Top 10.

The Olevia 337H 37″ LCD TV that the Big Guy and I tried to buy on Black Friday came on sale again for a good price at Fry’s yesterday. The Big Guy had already gotten one online and has been very positive about the picture quality and performance so I decided TS1 and I deserved to have it as well. A day and a half later things are more or less set, but the experience has been a wearing one.

The connection and rationale still aren’t clear to me but Fry’s threw in a Sony DVD/VCR combo box as part of the deal. If it had HD capability… but no, it’s just a normal, $99 list price piece of equipment. Still in the box, probably going on eBay or Craig’s List.

At the store I didn’t think about how I was going to get the large, heavy box up the flight of stairs to our apartment. I could call someone for help but that seemed like overkill for two minutes of work. I punted, leaving the box in the car while I called Comcast and ran over to their office to get the necessary new HD settop box. Warned that the settop box had only a DVI output, I grabbed a DVI-HDMI cable at Radio Shack.

The box also had two of those yellow hard plastic straps around the short side and testing seemed to prove I could use the straps for a decent hold and leverage, which turned out to be true though getting up the stairs required stopping every two or three steps–the box was not only big, it was heavy too.

Disconnecting and removing the old TV and settop box were straightforward though the TV was more difficult to move than the Olevia was to get up. I reviewed all the connections and hard to read instructions and plugged everything together, then gave the cable box a half hour to activate.

Not good. All I could get on screen was black and white picture, no sound and only the basic (non-digital) channels, no matter what I tried. Calling Comcast support yielding the first disappointing news. Neither the TiVo Series1 (which I’ve had and loved for four years now) and Series2 (which I was willing to buy to get the dual tuner, new features and big recording capacity) work with the Comcast HD boxes. Unfortunately we cannot (nor would we even if we could) spend $800 for the Series3 TiVo HD recorder, plus $300 for the first three years of service prepaid.

Initially I thought this was ugly business maneuvering by Comcast, (illegally?) tying their DVR to the HD box. But then I realized that neither the Series1 nor the Series2 have HD input or output and so even if they could be used that would be missing the point of having an HD-capable TV.

The TiVo and my (10 year old) home theater receiver were removed from the wiring flow with the settop box and DVD player connected directly to the Olevia. Still no sound though and, after checking websites, documentation and calling the Big Guy, I found out that DVI (unlike HDMI) only carries video and not sound. Problem solved by adding a cable from the Comcast audio out to the TV.

Still no sound, but good picture on all the expected channels. The DVD player worked fine, sound and all. More reading of documentation yielded the nugget that I’d used the wrong audio jacks on the TV. Okay, sound finally working.

What to do about recording shows though? The only immediate answer was to go back to Comcast and trade up to their HD DVR, which I did this morning. When I asked the officeperson if a box with HDMI would be available any time soon he stopped typing, turned the box around so the back was facing me and pointed to an HDMI jack. So the expensive DVI-HDMI cable went back to Radio Shack and an HDMI-HDMI cable came home to take its place.

The new equipment all went in and, with just a little bit more frustration and annoyance, worked. All in time to watch a repeat of Newcastle-Tottenham on FSC (not an HD channel and not the live match I expected, which was on the Setanta Sports package instead). Afterwards, being energy-conscious, I turned off the Olevia.

An hour or so I later I turned it back on and the screen filled with snow rather than the pretty picture and sound from before. As an experiment I pulled the HDMI cable out of the TV, waited, and plugged it back in. This worked. After a few more minutes I power cycled again with the same snowy result. This is California, it doesn’t snow here!

I called Olevia support this time and was put on hold for over 30 minutes; the front line support rep told me I was 34th in line and 12 techs were on duty. Finally connected, only to learn that this is, er, expected behavior for any HDMI TV connection, regardless of brand, and I could turn off the cable box every time I turned off the TV, losing its recording capability, or leave the TV on.

We can thank our friends in Hollywood because this is yet another noxious DRM-related “feature.” The HDMI protocol requires all devices that can take HD content (the TV) to get an authorization token from the the supplying device (the Comcast box) before it can decode the signal. The Olevia forgets the token, or is required to get a new one, the tech support staffer wasn’t sure, every time the power goes off and on.

The workaround for power cycling the cable box is unplugging and plugging the HDMI cable, awkward due to the jack locations. The HD picture–I’m watching Florida St. beat UCLA on ESPN HD right now–is excellent, I have to say. Can’t wait for some soccer to show up on FSN HD or ESPN HD!

I still miss TiVo, though. If for nothing else the onscreen programming guide is vastly superior to Comcast’s, but also for the much better user interaction design (that is, the number and of type of clicks required for specific tasks like finding shows or setting up recordings), TiVo Suggests and all the Season Passes set up over the years.

The Comcast HD DVR settop box (though not the plain HD one), in its favor, does have dual tuners, which will be handy when the shows come back with new episodes next week month year. I can finally watch My Name is Earl again and deal with SciFi moving Battlestar Galactica to Sundays.

Maybe TiVo will pick on Microsoft’s idea and send me a Series3 to blog about? Stranger things have happened.

FYI: UCLA QB Patrick Cowan just threw an interception that was returned for a TD right after Florida State drove 90 yards for a TD and the Seminoles look to have locked up the Emerald Bowl, leading 44-27 with 2:45 left in the game. Any team that beats UCLA is okay in my book. Go ‘Noles!

I was surprised to read Anil’s entry this morning paying tribute to the Godfather of Soul. Brown has been a star since before my birth and certainly had his share of troubles the last 20 years but still only celebrated his 73rd birthday this year. Most of his hits came before I was old enough to appreciate them; the two that did make an impression on me were Living in America and Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud).

One thing Brown said that seemed truly meaningful to me was his definition of soul, and perhaps of his own life:

“Soul is all the hard knocks, all the punishment the black man has had … all the unfulfilled dreams that must come true.

The third book in Charles Stross’s entertaining series that meshes science fiction (intra-multiverse travel), fantasy (two of the three Earths featured–so far–are 100 and 500 years behind our’s in development) and present-day drug and national security politics, The Clan Corporate starts a bit slow but perks up about 30-40 pages in and never lets up.

Still, given its place in the middle of things, the book doesn’t really settle any big questions though it does put more plates spinning at the end of sticks. Miriam Beckstein a/k/a Helge voh Thorold d’Hjorth is still in hot water from the events of The Hidden Family, and we spend much of this episode learning about her clan and its place in the politics of Neijwein.

The defection of Mattias at the end of the second volume has made everyone more than a little paranoid, you see. Plus, the Clan is still interested in bringing the royal family into the worldwalkers’ braiding scheme and there are non-Clan political players as well. The results of Mattias’ defection on our own American government, personified by DEA agent Mike Fleming, are not, er, unsurprising either; Stross puts the lever squarely in VP Dick Cheney’s hands and thereby escalates the scheming.

But Stross really does political well. Further, Miriam’s frustration and missteps build throughout and thus she becomes much more human.

recommended

TS1 found this while looking for something to do on New Year’s Eve, I’m not sure how. But I highly recommend if you have a free night between now and January 6, spend the $20 a ticket and drive over to San Jose to see Actors Theater Center’s stage production of The Rocky Horror Show. We had a terrific time, the cast is very good and the show is in a cozy little theater next to a middle school.

Before I lived out here I used to go to shows fairly often, on Broadway, off Broadway and the Paper Mill Playhouse (a, it’s the official state theater of New Jersey and b, the original building was a paper mill, okay?), my parents being quite the devotees of the stage. Out here, not being a huge fan of driving up to San Francisco and the ridiculous ticket prices for big name shows (we checked into seeing Jersey Boys and the cheapest seats worth buying are $90 each, and that’s before the TicketMaster fees).

These days people may not remember that this was originally a stage production in London and the movie wasn’t made until two years later (though Tim Curry was the star of both). Director Jeff Hicks has done a nice job of translating it back and local theater vet Tad M. Morgan is a hoot as Frank N. Furter and David Cori does a perfect job as the narrator, handling the traditional audience responses especially well. After the curtain call, the whole cast lead the audience in doing the Time Warp (again).

It’s been a long time but I used to be a regular at the Friday midnight movie shows back in college and this was a fun time warp. If you’re still looking for a different way to ring in the New Year, this is a good bet.

recommended