Bigger, thinner, and pricier

The Harris Poll had some interesting HDTV statistics yesterday:

• Almost a year-and-a-half after Blu-Ray won the format war, 11% of US adults own HD-DVD players but only 7% own Blu-Ray players

I own both, although my HD-DVD player is gathering dust in the spare room – I only have a handful of HD-DVDs, none of which I need to watch, and I didn’t want to squeeze another player into the stack of devices cluttering my entertainment system.  I have no plans to purchase Blu-Ray discs, but instead pay a surcharge to rent them, whenever possible, from Netflix.  But the Harris Poll data is confusing, since they also report 9% of US adults own a Sony Playstation 3 (PS3).  Well, those are Blu-Ray players, so why would they say only 7% of adults own a Blu-Ray player?  Perhaps many PS3 owners don’t realize they can play Blu-Ray discs?

• Ownership of televisions that were 36 inches or larger increased from 35% to 42% of US adults this past year
• Ownership of HDTVs increased from 35% to 47% of US adults this past year

My HDTV is only 30″ and is an older flatscreen 16:9 CRT.  So it is deep and heavy, but it also is bright, has fairly accurate colors, and a very wide viewing angle.  I usually sit eight feet from the screen, so standard-definition video sources don’t look grainy and I can tug the couch up closer if I want to see a Blu-Ray, downloaded, or over-the-air HD show with greater perceived resolution.  (My screen tops out at 800 lines, which is fine for its size, although if you move up to 42″ and beyond the full 1080 is preferred.)

I’d certainly like a bigger screen, but I’m still leery of plasmas, especially with Pioneer exiting that market, although some well-regarded Panasonic units have reportedly greatly reduced their lifetime-loss-of-brightness and burn-in problems.  And LCD televisions still suffer from some motion blur as well as color quality and brightness dropoff at large viewing angles.  Without some quality up-conversion, I’m also afraid the things I watch in standard-definition would look lousy on a huge screen.

I’d be more fond of the instant gratification from streaming HD video were it not for the frequent buffering delays, lack of bonus features, and sparse selection compared to discs from Netflix. Some new HDTVs incorporate Netflix streaming, which I can already get through my Tivo HD along with Amazon’s video-on-demand.  And I can also rent videos on my Apple TV, although that has been less satisfying with limited content and some annoying playback delays.  I used to hook my Averatec laptop to the television to watch Amazon Unbox video, but even with my smaller Asus Eee PC that remains a bothersome kludge.  To get the computer image on the TV I have to plop the netbook by the TV, plug in the audio cable and two cables for the video dongle that converts VGA to component video, then plug in the computer to the wall since I will be overclocking it continuously, then tweak the screen settings on the PC and the receiver and the video dongle, all for an image that suffers from blooming and color distortions.  Good grief!  So I’m truly thankful Amazon’s service is on the Tivo now.

Another thing I’d like to do is surf the web on my TV from the couch.  To avoid the above hassle with the netbook, I’ve hacked my Apple TV with the aTV Flash so that I can now surf the net through it, but plugging in my wireless keyboard and mouse causes the overburdened Apple TV to stutter a bit and the CRT image is still rather lacking.  So I find that I’d rather just put the netbook in my lap and use it.

But eventually I will make the jump to a larger HDTV, perhaps 42″ to 46″, with 1080p resolution, good standard-definiton upconversion, and multiple HDMI inputs as well as VGA.  For couch surfing I’d hook that new TV directly to a small dedicated computer with a wireless keyboard and trackpad.  But today a good Samsung LCD TV and Mac mini to achieve the results I seek would cost me about $2,000.  Ouch!  I’ll stick with my CRT and netbook for now.

Here is a superb video on astronomical sizes which happily can be viewed in high definition.  Yeah, you may have seen something like this before, but I like the way this one is put together and you can’t beat that Black Hole soundtrack.

Here’s a fun video about the unboxing experience we nerds love to view online.

We are not alone

Here’s a great essay from fellow introvert Jonathan Rauch about our orientation.  As he notes, we’re not necessarily socially inept nor shy, but we are different.  I’m known as a favorite and funny teacher and am comfortable with public speaking and leadership roles, actively participating and speaking up for causes that are important to me.  But I am most definitely an introvert, happily spending much of my time alone.

Here are 10 tips for introverts from Nancy R. Fenn:

• Assert yourself as a legitimate personality type.  There are two legitimate personality types: extroverts and introverts.
• Correct people when they refer to introverts as neurotics.  Introverts are not neurotics. They are introverts.
• Correct people when they refer to introverts as prone to mental illness.  Introverts are no more prone to mental illness than others. When extroverts are under stress, they overeat, smoke, drink and become violent. When introverts are under stress, they withdraw. This does not make them mentally ill.
• Correct people when they assert that introverts are anti-social.  Introverts are not anti-social. They are drained by other people and must limit their time in company, but they are friendly and loving people.
• Correct people when they assert that introverts have nothing to say.  On the contrary, introverts won’t speak unless they have something important to say!
• Put a proper value on your ability to be a good listener.  Good listening skills are invaluable in all areas of business and industry.
• Do not apologize for time spent alone.  Explain to critical “others” that introverts need to spend at least half their time alone for good mental and emotional health. Then assert, if necessary, that introverts are a legitimate personality type.
• Introverts are not losers.  Take pride that you are in the company of such introverts, past and present, as Albert Einstein, Steven Spielberg, Queen Elizabeth II, Charles Darwin, Mahatma Gandhi, Michael Jordan and Bruce Lee.
• Stand up for introverted children who are being misunderstood in your presence.  This is one of the most healing things you can possibly do for yourself as it will heal your own inner child.
• Don’t let pushy extroverts interrupt you while you’re reading a good book.  Explain politely that you can’t talk right now, you’re reading a book.

And, lest we get too serious, here’s an old joke:

How can tell if a physicist is an introvert or an extrovert?

She’s an introvert if she looks at her shoes while talking to you.  She’s an extrovert if instead she looks at your shoes.

This July I will make my fifth summer trip to the Pacific Northwest.  My love for the area began a decade ago when I won free plane tickets for two anywhere in the continental U.S. as the district teacher of the year.  My criteria for that was to a) go as far away from Oklahoma as possible, b) go somewhere cool during the hot Oklahoma summer, and c) go somewhere I had never been before.  So a friend and I flew to Seattle and also visited Mt. St. Helens and Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia.  It is a lovely region in the summer with bright but cool days, beautiful vegetation, and friendly folks.

I enjoyed that trip enough that I returned to Seattle in 2005 and then visited Oregon in 2006 with drives and dayhikes along the Columbia River and all the way down its coastline from Astoria to the redwoods of northern California.  I was lucky on that trip, renting a Taurus with a sunroof to travel down Highway 101 and enjoy the beautiful Oregon coast, which is thankfully entirely open to the public.  What a progressive state!  Last year I again received the two-free-tickets deal as the district teacher of the year, so a friend and I visited Washington state and British Columbia.  This summer I am planning another dayhike-oriented trip to Oregon.

Oregon Trip 2009

This time I’ll fly into Portland and then drive over to the coast for a series of dayhikes.  I prefer staying in motels to camping, with short drives and dayhikes in the morning and afternoon and a hearty evening dinner at a decent restaurant.  Since cost is an issue, I’ll be staying at Motel 6’s and Microtels for most of this trip.  But I have booked more expensive beachfront accommodations for a few days.  And around the midway point I booked a room with a hot tub to help me keep pounding the trails.

I’ll be working my way southward on Highway 101 from the Cannon Beach area to hike along the sea and also Saddle Mountain and Neahkahnie Mountain.  Then I’ll hit the beautiful Agate Beach area near Newport for hiking at Cascade Head and inland to the Alsea and Green Peak Falls.  Another stay at Yachats will let me hike the gorgeous Cape Perpetua area and then I’ll drive inland to Bend for some hiking at the Newberry National Volcanic Monument.  I’ll complete the loop with a dash up to The Dalles for a day of hiking along the Columbia River on my way back to Portland.

The hotter it gets here in Oklahoma, the more I look forward to my forthcoming escape to the cool northwestern coast!

More folks are going wireless

With the end of the 2008-2009 school year, I cancelled my Vonage VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone service.  I thus joined the 18% of adult Americans (and over one in five US households) who have only cell phones. I’d previously cut the POTS (plain old telephone service) back in December of 2007, but hooked up the internet phone as a backup to the cell phone.

My Vonage plan of 500 minutes for about $23 per month was certainly cheaper than the traditional service and included nice features like Caller ID, digital voice mail, selective number blocks, and having my cell phone ring simultaneously with the internet line.  And ditching my old POTS number for an unlisted internet phone cut off all of the political and other annoyance calls that the “Do Not Call” list had failed to kill off.

But I simply am not social enough to chat away on the phone, so I was getting very little use of that vestigial land line.  And occasionally the internet phone would go offline, not coming back up until I cycled the power on the Motorola base unit.  My iPhone service already costs me over $70 per month, so I decided to save $276 per year and go cellular only.  Since my “teacher step raise” for next year will be a whopping $475 before taxes, saving $276 sounds pretty good.  If I keep scrimping, I can keep up with inflation…maybe.

I figured that there would be some pain involved with the cancellation, and there was a bit.  Vonage won’t let you cancel via the internet, claiming it is for security reasons.  But you can do everything else online, so obviously they really just want you to talk to an agent who will try to save the account.  After navigating their annoying voice-response switchboard a polite agent offered me a 100-minute monthly plan for $10 plus some fees (said plan does not appear anywhere I could find on their website), but I didn’t bite.  And disconnecting the service incurred a charge of $43.19 – sounds a lot like Ma Bell’s old gotchas, doesn’t it?  But it wasn’t anywhere near the pain AOL customers reportedly went through a few years back when they wanted to ditch that service, and I’ll start saving money in less than two months.

I’ll have to be more vigilant about having my cell phone charged and handy.  But now I have some money I can put toward my favorite summer mental health therapy – a week of hiking along the Oregon coast.  And sure enough, cell phone service out on the trail is pretty spotty – thank goodness!

The new Star Trek movie seems to be a hit

J.J. Abrams’ take on Star Trek appears to be a hit, easily outperforming all of the previous Trek features in opening weekend box office.  However, these days movies have a short life in theaters and rely heavily on foreign markets and rental sales.  We shall see how it fares overall later.  Paramount finally ponied up some real money for this film, and it appears to have been a wise investment.

I enjoyed the film quite a bit, although it had the frenetic pace, camerawork, and lens flare syndrome that makes for a better Bourne flick than meaningful scifi. The reimagined Battlestar Galactica had a shaky documentary style that worked well for it, but I wouldn’t want to see them go too far down that road for Star Trek.

(Caution – spoilers ahead.)

The standout actors for me were Bruce Greenwood as Pike, Karl Urban as McCoy, Anton Yelchin as Chekov, and Zoe Saldana as Uhura.  But Zachary Quinto as Spock and Chris Pine as Kirk also did admirably in roles made very difficult by the quite distinctive acting of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner.  I was less impressed by how they scripted Scotty and his odd sidekick, although Simon Pegg was enjoyable as an actor.  The villain, a vengeful Romulan miner played by Eric Bana, was weakened by a plot struggling to introduce so many characters and back stories and to explain away inconsistencies with over 40 years of previous Star Trek episodes.  I do fully embrace the approach of having an alternate timeline – I can think of no better way to resolve the canon issues that were stultifying the franchise after hundreds of episodes and ten films spread across four decades.

The new Enterprise

Regarding the Enterprise, they should have just used the outlines of the ship from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, since the minor design changes in the new film only detract slightly rather than enhance it.  The engine nacelles seem a bit silly in proportion and attachment to the hull.  But it is close enough to get a pass and clearly Abrams wanted a noticeably larger ship.  It is ironic, however, that the larger scale of the new Enterprise is dwarfed by the villain’s immense vessel.

The new engine room may be a better approximation of the realities of fusion reactors, but seemed more like a brewery redress than a starship interior.  The more industrial look is fine, but the rooms were too cavernous and my impression of the floors was they seemed more like concrete slabs than deck plates.  But I very much like the redesign of the secondary hull with its many more utilitarian shuttles – that is a design change that is long overdue.

Science-wise, the early explosion of the USS Kelvin with silence after someone was blown out of the hull was a nice bit of seldom-observed accuracy for Star Trek, as were the bumpy shuttle rides.  And I loved how the ship seemed to be far less able to “scan ahead” while in warp drive, better reflecting the problems of faster-than-light travel – more like a hyperspace jump than the “fast cruise” of previous outings.  The ship’s multiple weapons and faster firing pace is also more realistic, but oddly less satisfying than the old slower long-duration phasers and torpedoes.  Battlestar Galactica had a great take on weaponry that appears to have affected the Trek aesthetic, even though they haven’t given up on beam weapons.

I certainly think this reboot was a success, and look forward to more outings with this cast.  Abrams is on board to produce the next film, although he has not committed to directing it.

UPDATE:

Don’t miss the concept art Ryan Church created in his work on this film.

Governor Henry Vetoes SB 834

Governor Brad Henry rescued Oklahoma schools today by vetoing Senate Bill 834:

While local control is an important component of a successful public education system, it is also critical to have rigorous state standards in place to produce the highest quality graduates and ensure achievement and accountability throughout the system. Recognizing the importance of such uniform standards, public and private sector leaders have advocated and implemented numerous reforms in recent years to raise the academic bar for all students and schools.

Senate Bill 834 would essentially turn back the clock on much of that important progress and weaken landmark reforms by allowing school administrators to create their own rules and ignore more rigorous state standards, including, but not limited to, the smaller class size mandates championed by former Gov. Henry Bellmon and Oklahoma voters in the historic passage of House Bill 1017 in 1990. SB 834 would also endanger such worthy programs as full-day kindergarten and alternative education in addition to making optional such critical personnel as school librarians and counselors.

Furthermore, SB 834 does a deliberate disservice to the backbone of the public education system, the public school teacher, by weakening or eliminating educators’ rights and benefits, including due process rights guaranteed under the constitution. These provisions would also undermine ongoing efforts to attract and retain the best and brightest teachers in Oklahoma, something that is critically important, particularly for a state that is routinely recognized for having some of the best educators in the nation.

At a time when we are working to send the signal that Oklahoma is serious about improving its education system and producing high-quality graduates who can compete in the 21st Century global economy, it would be a disastrous step backward to approve legislation that weakens state standards, abolishes historic reforms and reduces rights and benefits provided to teachers.

A little mental hygiene can help you watch your Facebook Manners.

Stephen Malinowski’s Music Animation Machine brings a visual clarity to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor.