I currently have a Sony HDTV (actually has the tuner built in) and it bugs me that I can only record in standard definition, especially when all of the local channels are now broadcasting in High Definition.

BTW -- there's a nasty little secret that no one that wants to sell you a Plasma TV will tell you: While most Plasma displays certainly qualify as "High Definition Capable," they can only display the middle resolution (720p) directly. The highest resolution of HDTV, 1080i, can only be displayed on a Plasma display by downconverting the signal. Oh, and Plasma displays actually burn in faster than CRT-based rear projection displays. Pretty much every Plasma display I've seen in public has some sort of image burn in evidence. No thanks. I'll wait for cheaper LCD or DLP displays before I spend the money on a Plasma display.

3:52:27 PM    comments ()  trackback []  

The lecture I went to last Saturday was definitely one of those. It was a lecture by a master magician named Rafael Benatar, and my friend Steve insisted that I go. Boy am I glad I did. Rafael did some very magical tricks with cards, making them change right before your eyes, mere inches away from your face, and with no special equipment other than a normal deck of cards, and his prodigious ability. He also did some very good work with the cups and balls, but what stuck with me was the card work, and some especially devious tricks that he used to completely sell the effect.

Amazingly, most of the card effects that Rafael performed were based on two particular sleights, which can be found in any good book on card magic. It's just that Rafael is a master at putting them together in skillful and devious ways. If you are interested in learning sleight-of-hand with cards, I would recommend the Card College series of books. The full set is 5 volumes, and covers pretty much anything you would want to learn about handling cards. I would also recommend looking up the local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Magicians or a related group, since there's no substitute for personal instruction. I'm incredibly lucky because I have some very accomplished magician acquaintances. Imagine if you were friends with someone who was cool in his own right, but was also good friends with Larry Wall or Guido van Rossum. Imagine that you also got to hang with them whenever they were in town. That's what it's like being friends with Steve.

2:24:02 PM    comments ()  trackback []  

Suddenly I'm staring at the "Safe Mode" prompt that every Windows user dreads. Whaddya mean you didn't shut down cleanly? I watched you do it!

So I select the "boot windows normally" selection. The boot screen starts up, and about half way through the screen blips, and I'm looking at the power-on self test screen.

Damn.

I pick "safe mode" and the same thing happens. My heart starts to sink. It looks like the hard drive ate itself. I walk off in search of the hardware guru, letting the machine do its startup and crash thing.

By the time I get back with our hardware person, the machine has made it farther into the boot sequence, as I am now looking a CHKDSK screen, which is scrolling all of those errors that you expect to see if your hard drive is eating itself. I consult with the hardware maven, and she insists that since I have one of the slow machines anyway, I should snag one of the faster spares and copy what I can off of my dying drive.

Since the new machines use these compact cases, they only have room for one drive bay. So I pop the case open on the new machine, unplug the CDROM, and plug the old drive in it's place, and start copying what I can. After that's done, I start the arduous process of installing the development tools on my machine. I'm sure you know what that was like. You know I wasted the entire day on this task, and this morning I'm still discovering the bits that I forgot yesterday.

I hate this. One bad drive and I lose a day, and some of the next.

Sometimes I hate computers.

9:46:59 AM    comments ()  trackback []