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July 26, 2007
January 26th, 2008
On this date, early next year, Alanna can apply for her full driver's license.
She got her Learner's Permit today!
Posted by Steven at 03:36 PM | Comments (0)
July 25, 2007
100,000 Miles of Golf
Today, four and one-half years after buying my Golf TDI, I rolled 100,000 (160,900 km) miles:
After driving this car the last year at DG Systems, and then to Canada, Mass. and Austin before settling down to driving mostly around McKinney, it's still a great ride. Sure, the struts are squeaking and the clutch has been savaged by me, but it still gets 45 MPG on the highway. And it still looks pretty new on the inside and out, despite dozens of SUV door dings and cloth seats.
Posted by Steven at 05:30 PM | Comments (0)
July 21, 2007
New DLP TV
Last Saturday our eight year-old Toshiba TheaterWide SD TV finally gave up the ghost. For the last year, the screen has been flicking in size, which hinted at a failing transformer. The CRTs inside were long burned in and out of convergence, and the image has been soft and fuzzy for several years. It was not doing well.
Anne and I decided to go ahead and take the HD plunge, and on Sunday I bought a Samsung HL-T5676S DLP screen. The unit is 56" diagonal, and less than a foot deep. Perched on an Ikea stand with wheels, it just fits in the large space we built in 2003 for the TV.
Our <$100 Samsund DVD player has an 1080i up-converting mode, which plays through an HDMI interface to the DLP TV. The picture quality is staggering. We watched The Lord of the Rings and it felt like being in the theater. The first movie I watched on it was 2001 and it was stunning, too. The DLP artifacting is well hidden with several technologies in the TV that try to mask the hard edges of DLP pixels. It works!
Hooking up the new Canon XH-A1 camcorder in Component Input and watching footage taken on it is also just amazing. You can really see the quality of the Canon camera in native 1080i on this screen.
I also tried my MacBook Pro on it using a DVI-to-HDMI converter. The result? A 1920 x 1080 pixel digital screen! Just incredible.
About the only thing that looks poor on this display is the ReplayTV shows I record in 2Mbs mode (Standard). I'm moving all my show recording to 6 Mbps (Fine), but at a loss of 66% of the recording time :-(. Also dissappointing: no Comedy Central nor SciFi Channel shows are offered in HD, so I'm in no hurry to upgrade.
Posted by Steven at 02:11 AM | Comments (1)
July 14, 2007
"Weird Al" Concert
"Weird Al" Yankovic performed in Garland, TX today at the GISD Special Events Center, a sports auditorium that reminded me of the Bronco Bowl in Dallas, where I last saw Al perform.
The concert was very professional, entertaining and of course, silly. Al had several (at least a dozen) costume changes, and covered songs from his entire career, focusing on the most recent album and it's hit "White and Nerdy". I had hoped he would debut his Segway scooter, and he did, riding it for the first part of that song on stage. The old favorites were there, too, like Fat and Yoda.
The seating, and especially the reserved seating, was a big mess. Sidebar Entertainment really screwed up on this, after selling reserved seats and then all but abandoning them when we got to the arena. The venue changed -- twice -- from Myers Park in McKinney to the Third Monday Trade Days (where I saw The Orchestra with Leo), to just off Garland Rd. and SH-190. Other friends who attended were cheated out of better seats because they were far back in the line that waited over an hour to get in. The concert started an hour late, at 9pm, and finished just before 11pm.
I took a staggering 1,620 photos, which I'll put online in a day or so.
Posted by Steven at 08:37 PM | Comments (0)
July 13, 2007
Deltos, An Etymology
• deltiology
(noun) The study or collecting of postcards. [From Greek deltion, diminutive of deltos (writing tablet) + -logy.] Usage: Floyd Jerdon is one of those people who would never confuse deltiology with scrutinising college Greek week or studying deposits at the mouth of a river. - Barbara Dempsey; Postcards Send Him Back to Another Time; South Bend Tribune (Indiana); Feb 2, 2003.
I thought I had made this word up, whole cloth, in 1977. Imagine my surprise these thirty years later!
Update
Wikipedia gives this expansion on the meaning:
The Greeks inherited the folding pair of wax tablets, along with the leather scroll and the Phoenician alphabet, in the mid-eighth century. Their word for the tablet, deltos has even retained its Semitic designation, daltu, which originally signified "door" but was being used for writing tablets in Ugarit in the thirteenth century BCE (Burkert 1992:30). In Hebrew the term evolved into daleth.
Sounds like the word Dalek has some phonetic derivation in deltos, too. Is that a pun, too?
Posted by Steven at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)
Elephants On the Run in Toronto
Check out this recording on police radio dispatch in Toronto, when an elephant escaped from a local circus.
Posted by Steven at 03:36 PM | Comments (0)
July 12, 2007
Honest Ed Passed Away
"Honest Ed" Mirvish died this week at the age of 92. He was one of Toronto's most colorful citizens, owner of a legendary store as well as the two best theaters in Toronto (Royal Alexandra Theater and Princess of Wales Theater). I saw Mamma Mia! twice at the Royal Alexandra, and will never forget what a great time I had there.
Posted by Steven at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)
July 09, 2007
Matt Visited, Briefly
Got to see Matt Bailey this weekend. He brought his mom's PC up for me to look at, and I returned it to him late Sunday night at Café Brazil in Dallas, before he had to drive back to Houston.
He's cut his hair and he looks pretty good with the short cut. I still miss the blonde color, but this is a far less menacing look that he used to sport. It's somewhat disturbing how much his head looks like his father's now!
Posted by Steven at 01:34 AM | Comments (0)
July 05, 2007
iPhone Sold Out!
According to online sources, the iPhone initial run of around 1,000,000 units is sold out. Speculation abounds as to how many units were bought explicitly for the purpose of reselling them, dissecting them, or hacking them, but I'll wager that the vast majority are being used as iPhones. Rumor has it that Flash support is coming soon; that will open up a lot of web pages that otherwise render ok.
It's still an amazing product ... the buyer's remose so many predicted just isn't there. This is a really powerful palm-sized computer.
Posted by Steven at 02:29 PM | Comments (0)
July 03, 2007
The Orchestra - A Review
I finally sampled and put the album No Rewind by The Orchestra on my MP3 database. Those of you with access can look for it under "The Orchestra". This is a surprisingly ELOesque album, and I encourage any ELO fan to seek it out.
Three of ELO's original artists contributed to this album, but most importantly Lou Clark, who did the arrangements for ELO's legendary orchestral sound, contributed to this album. Mik Kaminski's violin is also prominent in the performances, while Clark's synthesizer provides the missing cellos and other strings. Vocals by Eric Troyer and Parthenon Huxley sound close to the original Jeff Lynne sound. This album comes across much more like an early ELO album, complete with a eerie remake of The Beatles' Twist and Shout.
I found this review on line and it gave me pause to consider what I was holding in my hands: a rare CD that captures the original ELO sound (well, the '77 - '80 sound).
... Rechristened The Orchestra, the band continued touring, also booking studio time out of their own pockets on several tour stops to lay down tracks for a new album. The result, which the band proudly proclaims was created without a single cent of money from any labels or outside benefactors, is No Rewind, which marks an incredible reinvention of the group’s sound.The band’s new blood - Huxley and Townsend - asserts itself right off the bat with “Jewel And Johnny”. Kicking off with a beat not a million miles away from the fun, jaunty gait of “Mr. Blue Sky” itself, Jewel and Johnny shows that the new recruits have, in fact, brought The Orchestra that much closer to the sound of old-school ELO. (It’s worth noting at this juncture that Huxley is from the same pool of reared-on-the-70s L.A. power pop talent that has also given us Jason Falkner and Jon Brion.) There were tracks on both of ELO Part II’s studio albums that faintly irritated me because they made it sound like the group was trying to bring a hard rock sound to the table; not so with No Rewind. The songs here are finely crafted pop-rock with a Beatlesque sensibility, which is, ironically, what Jeff Lynne was always trying to do with the original ELO. And the songs featuring Huxley on lead vocals are a real treat, because it sure doesn’t hurt that Huxley’s versatile baritone isn’t a million miles away from the voice of the aforementioned Mr. Lynne. Whether consciously or not, there seems to have been a reassessment of what made the original ELO what it was; the songwriting is sharper this time around, both musically and lyrically, with fantastic results.
Joe Bob sez "Check it out!"
Posted by Steven at 06:42 PM | Comments (1)
July 02, 2007
45
I survived my 45th birthday today.
Thanks to everyone who sent a card or e-mail! Dad, your card was especially hilarious. Charles and Kim, glad you were there to see me at my finest at the White Rock Skate Rink. Those other birthday kids were traumatized to see me in the birthday balloons.
Posted by Steven at 09:33 PM | Comments (1)
July 01, 2007
White Rock Skate Rink Party
I got to celebrate my 45th birthday at the White Rock Skate Rink (to the horror of the seven year-olds who shared my birthday):
Posted by Steven at 02:45 PM | Comments (1)