grassmonk.net

It’s been quite a while since I wrote anything here.  It’s also been quite a while that I have been meaning to.  Two quite-a-whiles converging could be like crossing the streams.  Let’s hope the universe doesn’t end before I finish this.

First, a Blu-ray update.  I am still quite easily suckered; out of the just-under-40 titles that I currently own, there are only 8 that I don’t also own on DVD, and two of those I did have on DVD but gave the DVDs to friends or family.  That leaves about 30 titles that I have duplicates of, for reasons which fall into five categories:

1. Not all/hardy any/none of the DVD special features are on the Blu-ray (e.g. The Fifth Element, Spider-Man)
2. The DVD/movie holds a special place in my heart (e.g. Serenity)
3. It’s easier to take DVDs to other places (e.g. Cars, Ratatouille)
4. I am good at rationalizing silly things
5. Any combination of the above

So the Blu-ray has been fun, but once I get into the movie, can I really tell the difference from DVD without a side-by-side comparison?  Probably not.  Will I continue to buy Blu-rays, possibly of movies that I already own on DVD?  Yep.  Am I weird?  Absolutely.  In fact, I am going to buy Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children as soon as I can get it for less than $20.  I was about to mention Quantum of Solace, but I remembered that I don’t have that on DVD.  Hooray!  (I did buy Casino Royale again, though.)  (But I haven’t opened it.  I could still take it back!)  (I probably won’t.)

The two things that really bug me about Blu-ray, though, are the slow disc loading times, and the seeming lack of disc resume.  I watched X-Men the other night and I had time to go out to dinner and another movie before the menu loaded.  When I stopped the movie part of the way through to go take care of a child who had awakened, I afterward went to bed and woke up the next morning to find that the menu had just about loaded again after pressing play.

So I exaggerate, but not by much.

In other news, I have added the following to my List of Shows to Which I Will Admit Having Seen Every Episode (which list I should keep an updated copy of posted somewhere.  And by “should” I mean “nobody cares but me and I’ll probably do it anyway.  In six months”):

• Chuck
• Dollhouse

I still have not yet watched any Buffy or Angel, nor any Monk or Battlestar Galactica aside from the pilots, but I plan to get to them sometime in 2010, after I finish my current backlog of unwatched TV-on-DVD (like He-Man and DuckTales) and rewatch some DVDs that I haven’t see for 3 or 4 years (like The Truman Show and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure).

I did, however, finally read the Harry Potter books.  They were pretty enjoyable, and got increasingly better as I went along, with the exception of book 5, which I assume originally went by the less-marketable title of Harry Potter and the Non-Stop Whining.  Seriously, the longest book in the series and it’s all whining.  Now I just have to see the movies, which will happen sometime in 2012 or so when they’re all on DVD, assuming the world hasn’t ended first.

Also, my little boy turned 1 a couple of weeks ago.  We had a fun little party for him with some neighborhood friends.  He has become quite the little personality, and has no fear of his 4-year-old sister.  I suppose that makes it a good thing we didn’t name him Sephiroth.

Finally, Linux is awesome.  I have been running KDE4 since January and it’s been a treat.  In the past few months I’ve actually gotten to contribute (in very small ways) to a few open source projects, namely QtCurve and Kaffeine.  I thought I would have more to say about that, but I guess I don’t, at least not right now.

Finally finally, I really need to do some more poetism commentaries soon.  I imagine I’ll think about it for a few more months before I actually get to it.  That’s all for now.