Saturday, May 10. 2008
Movie: IronMan
Finally got a chance to see IronMan and, even though I am not a comics fan, I did throughly enjoy this movie (especially the incredible technology on display in the billionaire's house - if I had displays like that, I probably wouldn't leave the house  ).Thankfully, my viewing experience was vastly superior to my coworker's - not a single constantly talking kid to be found . The theater was packed with a very appreciative audience - always a plus for movie watching. |  |
Saturday, May 3. 2008
HDMI Woes: Diagnosed & Fixed
Aah, the joy of new technology.  After having continuing strange ( and intermittent ) problems with my Sony Blu-Ray player (picture flaking out, sometimes not showing at all, etc), my first instinct was to blame my HDMI switcher and duly tried switching the input ports around with no luck. Finally got off of my lazy duff and swapped the Blu-Ray player HDMI cable with the DVR box HDMI cable. Wouldn't you know it, the DVR box started having issues - freezing up, etc. Hmmm - time to get a new cable perhaps? Since I need instant gratification, I duly made the pilgrimage to my Best Buy store to pay an inflated price for a new HDMI cable  (for those not in need of instant gratification, this online store comes highly recommended to me by a coworker), and, presto, HDMI happiness all the way around. |  |
Wednesday, April 30. 2008
Movie: Standing in the Shadows of Motown
| Finally had the chance to see a much overlooked movie Standing in the Shadows of Motown. It is a documentary, intercut with concert footage, of The Funk Brothers. The Funk Brothers were an outstanding group of studio musicians that played on every Motown hit, but still remained largely unknown, even though their hits are legendary. It was a very well done movie and I would highly recommended it, especially if you are a fan of music history. (now if only this movie was available on Blu-Ray.... ) |  |
Monday, April 28. 2008
Concert: Casting Crowns
| Thanks to the generosity of one of our vendors, I (and some of my friends) was able to take in the Casting Crowns concert this past weekend. It was the first time that I had the opportunity to view a concert from private box and it was quite an enjoyable experience . I was also relatively new to the music of Casting Crowns as well, but I will definitely keep an eye on this group going forward. ( For the record, the Skillet concert was still my favorite one this year ) |  |
Wednesday, April 23. 2008
Netflix to Raise Blu-Ray Rental Fees
| All those (Blu-Ray fans) who didn't see this coming, please raise your hands. Now that the hi-def format war is essentially over, one of the first effects evidently will be Netflix raising the prices on their Blu-Ray rentals. |  |
Heroes: S2 Released? (On Blu-Ray?)
| The stars must truly be aligning. This past weekend, one of my coworkers whom I have been bugging forever to get on the Blu-Ray train finally succumbed and purchased a Blu-Ray player (of course I missed the post, so now I'll be the one receiving the ribbing ) and now rumor has it that Season 2 of Heroes will be released on DVD in August 2008. And in even more good news, Heroes: Season 1 and Heroes: Season 2 will be among Universal's first releases on Blu-Ray. Yes! Incidentally, Season 3: Villains starts September 2008. |  |
Monday, April 7. 2008
MPA Circuit Championships
| MPA (Minnesota Percussion Association) had the Circuit Championships this past weekend and my nephew and I took it in for the first time. It is a state-wide high school percussion competition (although there were some teams from North Dakota and Wisconsin) and it was quite an impressive event. There are four categories that teams are judged by: Performance Analysis, General Effect, Visual, Timing & Penalties. For the impatient, here are the final scores for the various classes. Soon I will have my pictures up as well... |  |
Friday, April 4. 2008
Matrix Trilogy coming to Blu-Ray?
| Rumor has it that all three Matrix films will be released on Blu-Ray this year, most likely in support of the the Wachowski Brothers' Speed Racer film. |  |
Monday, March 31. 2008
FIRST Overdrive Robotics Competition
| Thanks to my coworker, I heard about the First Robotics competition that my nephew and I took in this past weekend. Both of us were very impressed. For each match, there was Red Alliance and the Blue Alliance, which has three teams in each alliance. The object was to score as many points as possible during the match time. (Here is a video that details the scoring). You had to admire the ingenuity of some of the robots and there was definitely a good crowd on hand with a lot of enthusiasm. The touring of the pits (where the robots were worked on in between races) and being able to talk to some of the students was also very interesting. Each team (usually consisting of a fair number of members {some teams had up to 35}) had six weeks to build their robot and had to stay under 120 lbs. Here are some of the photos that I took of the competition (please excuse the quality ) and here is the final results of the competition. |  |
TV Show: Big Bang Theory
One of my coworkers tipped my off to yet another awesome TV show: The Big Bang Theory. One of my favorite lines so far is by Leonard (setup: Penny's ex-super-macho boyfriend sees Leonard {who is dressed up as Frodo} kissing Penny during a Halloween party):Yeah, you saw what you saw. That's how we roll in the Shire. Another one of the priceless scenes is where Penny is helping Leonard pick out a suit to wear for a conference that he is presenting a paper at. The funny part of it is I can easily imagine my sister and niece playing the role of Penny and me playing the role of Leonard. Wikipedia (of course) has a nice overview of the show (far better than I could give ), as well as an episode listing.(Of course, here is the official CBS page for the show as well). (Minor Note: Interesting article by a physicist on some fellow physicists reaction to the show and why such critisicm might be off the unwarranted. |  |
Saturday, March 29. 2008
Skillet Concert
| Took in the Skillet concert last night (Thousand Foot Krutch also performed as well as Decyfer Down) at the Club 3 Degrees. This was the first time that I had seen any of the groups in concert (I actually ended up missing Decyfer Down due to parking difficulties, but my friend told me that I didn't miss too much ). Thousand Foot Krutch was the next performer (after Decyfer Down) up and they performed a good set (nearly all of my favorite songs made it onto their song play list ). I especially liked the rendition of "What Do We Know?" with the lead singer walking through the audience while singing.Skillet then took that stage and put on a highly energized 90 minute set (which might have been even longer if Club 3 Degrees didn't have to close the doors at 11:00 pm due to the number of under-18 people in the crowd). I have never seen Skillet in concert before, but it was very obvious that they had been performing together for awhile - the band played very tightly together and all of the musicians definitely had great stage presence (the spinning around of various instruments certainly didn't hurt that impression ).All in all, a good concert. Reasonable ticket prices (since tickets didn't go through Ticketmaster, I could avoid the outrageous additional fees ), good sound, nice venue (they had the air on, so the place didn't turn into a furnace, especially since the concert was sold out ). |  |
Tuesday, March 4. 2008
TobyMac Concert
| Thanks to one of my co-workers, I found about the TobyMac concert (the Friday before the concert ), but fortunately was able to score a decent seat - up in the 106 section; not that far up from the stage. Jeremy Camp was the opening act and he was pretty good (a disclaimer: I am not that familiar with his music). TobyMac concert came out after an hour and played for a good while (although I was surprised that there wasn't really an official encore). However the concert was awesome - good sound and definitely good energy on stage. All in all, time well spent away from work. |  |
Monday, January 28. 2008
AMC Theaters Movie Deal
| For you movie buffs out there, AMC Theaters is offering a special in 30 cities, where you can view all 5 Best Picture Oscar Nominees back to back for $30 (which includes popcorn and free refills) on Saturday February 23rd. (Thanks Slick Deals). |  |
Sunday, January 27. 2008
Free & Legal P2P Music Downloads on the way?
Now that DRM (within the music industry at least) seems to be on the wane, there is speculation that paid music downloads might be following as well. Fueling the speculation is the launch of Qtrax (which has all four major labels (EMI, SonyBMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group) signed). The front page of their website boasts availability of over 25 million songs, but a big initial drawback (IMHO) is that the downloaded songs are not compatible with iPods and have to be played via a proprietary player. Another drawback is that the service is Windows-only (at least for right now)  .A P2P music tangent, is a nice TechCrunch article on the some of the music download search engines available. Update (1/29/08): Well, it seems like QTrax really messed up it's initial launch. For other prospective small businesses, it is usually wise to do the launch after getting signed contracts with your partners (especially if they are key to your success). Evidently, QTrax pulled the grand move of launching before getting signed agreements from 3 of the 4 records labels (the unsigned three say only that "talks are in progress"). |  |
Tuesday, January 22. 2008
4400: Season Four DVD Release Date
| Just heard that the fourth (and final *sob*) season of The 4400 has been announced on DVD on May 6th, 2008. Needless to say that I will miss this series greatly. Update (5/28/08): I must be terribly lax on the home consumer front, because it took me close to a month to finally pick this up, but better late than never. |  |
