Hollywood reams the consumer yet again

[LANGUAGE WARNING - Pissed off Badger Alert]

I'm not sure if you've heard by now, but I've been following the latest escalations in the HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray format war. The Digital Bits has had some of the best coverage and it is worth checking out. Basically, Microsoft dropped a chunk of change at Paramount and DreamWorks front door in exchange for them to stop being platform neutral and go HD-DVD exclusive. So, now they going Universal in the HD-DVD camp with the other studios either being Blu-ray exclusive or platform neutral.

What has this done?

Hmmm...how about fucked over the consumer royally? In an idiotic format war that was in no one's best interests, Blu-ray looked to be starting to win and that is when Microsoft acted. Now, it has sown the seeds of confusion within the potential audience and I agree with the prevailing opinion that less people will go with either.

I have been considering my options for some time; cheap MS Xbox HD-DVD drive or stand-alone Blu-ray player (PS3 isn't worth even considering). Now, I can say I have no idea what to do. I think I will likely still with DVD because as usual Hollywood has continued to fuck the consumer and we just continue to bend over and take it...

UPDATE:

So, I have given this more consideration and I've decided they both suck, yet I still want them. Realistically, I will probably not buy either as the waters are just to murky right now :(

I got this of the Digital Bits:

In a poll over at IMDB, fully 63% of the 16,000+ people who responded chose: "I have neither system and this makes [me] want to enter HD media even less. I'll stick with DVD for the time being." The next largest group, 10%, said they had no opinion and another 9% didn't know what HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc were. So that's 82% of people who either just don't care, don't know about the formats or are turned off by the format war.

It's not like we're talking polling people on the street, but this is from a movie junkie website!?!?!? No one (at least in large numbers) wants to go near this mess. That so disappoints me that these two camps our ruining HD optical media for the whole industry...

[2007-08-21] Weight Loss Report

Well, another week in the plan where I made it out and met the plan's requirements. I stuck to my point totals by the thinnest of margins. Free pizza with my favorite toppings at work last Friday nearly did me in :)

So, I am now at 335.8 pounds and that is down 2.4 pounds from last week. Hopefully, by this time next week I can post a graphic showing a coveted "25 pounds lost" star. I could conceivably even hit my mini-goal of 330 pounds. The first major goal of 60+ pounds lost is looking more and more possible by the end of the year. I am concerned what havoc winter may play with my progress. Summer has already made getting out and walking difficult, but I imagine winter may be worse. I guess I will just have to wait to see...

Ben eating Jello for the first time

Dinner tonight at Sweet Tomatoes...Ben loves his Jello ;)

Blockbuster - part deux

Well, Blockbuster has given me something to think about. When I switched to Blockbuster from Netflix, it was due to getting rentals for the same price, but with the added benefit of being able to exchange my online rental returns in store for a free movies. I wasn't thrilled about switching to a company that is an example of much of what is wrong in the movie industry. Well, today, I got the gift of an e-mail from the corporate giant that explains that they want to begin charging me an extra $7 per month for this privilege. Or I can remain at $17.99 per month and only get 5 in-store exchanges a month. I'm not the kind of person that likes being forced to keep track of simple things such as this. I want unlimited and no worries.

Well, in this same timeframe, Netflix cut their costs by $1 per month. Maybe it is time to restart my membership there and dump the evil corporate entity?

Code Monkey

My friend Kirsten posted this to her blog and I have to say that I love this AMV. It's extremely clever and well done. The song also rocks ... well, somewhat softly ;)

and now on weight watch...

So, it's now time for another weight report. With Heather & Ben out of town this past week, I assumed I wouldn't do well as I tend to eat "bad" foods when I am bach'ing it, stuff like potato skins, pizza, chinese, etc. Well, I did do that, but I guess I kept to moderation well enough to still lose weight.

I'm now down 2.8 additional pounds at 338.2 that brings my running total to -22.4 pounds. This has not been my best week, but I will gladly take a loss any week. If I can at least stay moving in the right direction, hopefully I'll get to the end goal sooner or later and I'm just a wee bit off of my first goal of 330 pounds.

Review: Hot Fuzz

As Heather and Ben are off at the beach, I had a quiet day at home today. Last night, Matt came down and we grabbed some dinner (stuck to my WW point goals) and then we played Tennis & Golf on the Wii. The Wii definitely shines when paired with other people. It is fully a social game system.

Anywho, back to the review. As it has been a quiet day, I have spent my time, uhm ... sleeping :) In between waking up and napping, I watched Hot Fuzz. I wish I had seen this one at the theater like I had wanted, but life/work conspired against me. It's great, absolutely fun. Not the same movie as Shaun of the Dead, but there are a lot of similarities and you can catch occasional references. It's just a fun movie and Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Timothy Dalton (still my third favorite Bond) are all fun in their roles.

Simon Pegg's Nicholas Angel on the movie Point Break:

Well, I wouldn't argue that it wasn't a no holds barred, adrenaline fueled thrill ride. But, there is no way you can perpetrate that amount of carnage and mayhem and not incur a considerable amount of paperwork.

It's hard to pull out great quotes as much of the movie, like Shaun of the Dead is subtle, dark humor. I definitely recommend both. They can be a bit violent in places, but their great spoofs of their respective mixed up genres.

Just as an aside, I REALLY want the DVD library room shown in this flick :)

To stash away for Ben

I think Heather and I may have to pre-order this for Ben. I really want him to have the opportunity to read these as he gets older and it seems like a great deal at $117 for all seven books.

Weight Watchers progress

For those of you that know, I have been getting involved with Weight Watchers in the past couple of months.

Well, I have now decided to stop attending the meetings. They simply weren't doing anything for me and to be quite honest, Weight Watchers isn't tuned at all for men (at least from the meetings I have seen). I am still doing the program and am quite happy with it so far, but that is due to the fact that they have some nice for-pay web tools that allow me to geek out over my diet tracking. Well, in an effort to remain accountable, not just to myself, but also others, I have decided to start posting some of my results here. At one point I may have been embarrassed or considered this too personal, but the reality is that I am a big guy, but I am making decent progress towards being a smaller bug guy.

So, without further ado, here is my latest weight chart...



I started at 360.6 pounds and as of my weigh-in this morning, I am at 341 pounds or a 19.6 pound loss.

The goal listed above is definitely not my end goal, but it is where I would like to be at the end of 2007. It is aggressive and I'm not fully sure it is attainable, but hey, they don't call them "stretch" goals for nothing. My next goal is to hit 330 pounds with the year end goal to be 299 pounds.

I'll update every week or two with were I am.

[UPDATE: Just for info, the stars in the chart above are milestones within the Weight Watchers system, i.e. first 5 pounds, additional 5 pounds, etc.]

Got some new games for the Wii

Wow, another weekend has come and gone :(

Still enjoying the Wii and yes, I am still working on more review details, but I just haven't had the time to finish yet. Yesterday, I traded in some Xbox 360 games that just hadn't done it for me and picked up the following Wii titles:

Excite Truck
Super Paper Mario
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

I also took the Wii over to our friend's Matt & Chrissy's house and he and I spent some time with Wii Sports and Excite Truck. Just like man video games, you really need more than 1 person to truly enjoy it as much as possible.

I've also spent some time with Super Paper Mario and it is fun and has some neat tricks, but wow is the dialogue in the game HORRIBLE. It is B-grade at best :)

The Simpsons Movie - Spider Pig Clip Download

The Simpsons Movie - Spider Pig Clip Download at demp.se/y - Adam Dempseys Blog

Check out this site to get the great "Spider Pig"! song from the Simpsons movie. It makes a great ringtone :)

Simpson Bill

Go here to build your own Simpsons avatar...

Initial Impressions of the Wii

My first few days were without internet access, so I didn't initially get to try that out (and once I did I discovered it isn't what I expected, but more on that later).

First off ... the hardware:

• Beautifully designed. My favorite of all the current consoles.
• The feel of the Wii Remote is good. It isn't too heavy, but is generally very comfortable.
• The Nunchuk controller is similar, but is rather more simplistic. Still, it feels natural to use.
• The range of the Sensor Bar to detect pointing directions from the Wii Remote is somewhat problematic for me right now. I can't find any position that allows me to stand or sit and play without moving the sensor bar, but I think this may be solvable.
• I really wish the console came with video cables better than plain old composite. Honestly, in this day and age, S-Video or more likely, Component really needs to come in box.
• Video generally looks good (given SD expectations), but I haven't tried hooking it up to my HDTV and likely won't until I get my hands on a Component cable.
• Seems I can save just about anything to good 'old SD flash. Nice change from other vendors.
  

Now for the software:

• I started with only Wii Sport. This game is a lot of fun, if not a bit repetitive. My favorite mini-games so far are Golf and Boxing.
• I rather quickly went out and picked up Wii Play bundled with a second Wii Remote. This game is a bargain bin collection at best. It isn't nearly as good as the Sport disc, but you only pay a $10 premium over a Wii Remote on its own, so the value isn't too bad. The Cow riding and fishing are fun. I have yet to get comfortable playing Billiards.
• I think games that demand physical action (sports, etc.) will work beautifully. I'm not sure the novelty won't fade on other titles, but we'll see.
  
• I rented SSX Blur and Elebits last night. Both seem fun, but I haven't really dug into them much yet.

More coming this week:

• Internet Connectivity
• Virtual Console
• More in-depth discussion on the listed game titles
  

Return from the Beach

So, I was really bad about blogging from the beach...

Too much relaxing to do. Let me give a quick run down now that we're back before I go to get some sleep...

• Amazing weather ... most of the week was clear and mid-80's temperature wise. We didn't get any nasty rain until late Saturday
• Ben didn't enjoy the water at all until Saturday morning ... prior to that he was afraid of the surf, but he did get into the sand ... lots of pictures to go through
  
• Ben broke a DVD player ... electronics mixed with a 1 year old is a no go
• I bought a Wii ... wandered into Wal-Mart while wasting some time and they had a single Wii box hidden at the back of the shelf. I will review it in the next few days
• Did lots of walking, 2-3 miles many days, but I still found myself back up about 5-6 pounds over 2 weeks ago. Food like the next entry explains ;)
• I love Buffalo Wild Wings ... really good wings and a good atmosphere

Now just one more day off and then back to work. Be back later with more ...

iPhone review at Yahoo

Review: Two Weeks With An iPhone - Yahoo! News

I haven't read the whole article, but it sounds rather interesting and worth a look...

The "plus" sign is a valid e-mail address character

I really need to go to bed, but I thought I would rant for a quick bit.

If you design a web page that asks for an e-mail address is some manner, you really better $%@& well known the accepted standards for e-mail or rather the "internet message format".

I get so pissed off when a web form won't allow me to enter a plus sign in my e-mail address. This is a valid and useful option. You see, everything after the + to the @ sign is presented but ignored for delivery. So, bill@vinsonweb.com and bill+spammingbastards@vinsonweb.com go to the same address, but I can at least see the address it was sent to. Now, when I give my e-mail address to any old company, I can see if I start getting spam on that e-mail account, I know who to blame.

There is no incentive for companies to fix this as it is used by a small group of people. Well, no reason except for the page designer sleeping soundly with the knowledge that he did his work right and isn't completely inept.

Bye, Bye Wildman look

BEFORE:

AFTER:

MID-WAY SNACK:


So, Ben had his very first haircut today. I was glad. Heather was a bit torn up, but kept it together :) He still has curls, just shorter hair overall. He handled it quite well, but did get a bit fussy towards the end, but never really cried. We ended up using Snip-its and I was pretty well satisfied with the job and with the environment of the place. There were lots of colors, lots of multimedia clips, and quite a number of toys for sale. All in all, a good choice.

You can see a few more photos here.

The Deathly Hallows

So, my hardback book copy of "Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows" arrived today from Amazon and I picked up the audiobook version at Target while we were out. Looks like I've got some great reading during my vacation.

Possible 6G iPod User Interface Redesign and Videos

Mac Rumors: 6G iPod User Interface Redesign and Videos

I could totally see this design and yeah, I would be tempted to buy one :)

Make sure to check out the videos...they're short, but interesting ... if you're into the iPod's GUI ;)

Can't get it out of my head

I am wandering B.J.s with the song "Jinglebell Rock" stuck in my head. I keep humming it and I don't know why. To make things worse ... I can't stop!