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.

Last month, two things of note happened, one of significantly more import that the other.

Firstly, my family was sealed in the Mount Timpanogos Utah LDS temple.  It was a long time coming, but it was awesome when it finally happened.  My little boy, of course, just slept through the ceremony, being one of those infants and all, but my wife and daughter were quite awake and I have never had a more happy experience in all of my life.

That was the important thing.  Naturally, I’ll talk more about the unimportant.

My wife let me buy a new TV and a Blu-ray player, and didn’t kick me out of the house when I bought a bunch of Blu-ray discs.  (It is important, at least to me, that I didn’t get kicked out of the house, because it is cold outside.)

Amazon had a deal that I was too weak to pass up, and so I didn’t.  When the TV arrived at my house, the delivery guys opened the box and liberated its content, and my daughter promptly asked, “Dad, why is our new TV so small?”

Well, she had a point; the screen size is actually a bit bigger, but physically the new TV is quite a bit smaller than the old one, on account of being an LCD flat panel, where the old one was a free-standing CRT rear projection model.

So anyway, the discs themselves are still really expensive, but with Black Friday I was able to find some deals and bought a bunch of movies that I already have on DVD, because I am apparently easily suckered.  I also bought a few movies that I didn’t already have on DVD, like WALL-E and The Dark Knight.  Somehow I must justify my Blu-ray buyingness.

And since my post from about a year ago I have some new TV shows to add to my List of Shows to Which I Will Admit Having Seen Every Episode, namely:

Arrested Development
The Batman
Bones
The Mentalist
The Spectacular Spider-Man
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

I also intend to watch Battlestar Galactica and Monk eventually, and possibly Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.  Also, I am somewhat fibbing on my list above, as I have not yet actually watched all of Arrested Development, but I intend to.

I also am intending to finally read the Harry Potter books.  I read Ender in Exile last month, and it was fantastic, as I have come to expect from Mr. Card.

Finally, Christmas is almost here, and just today I finally bought Sarah McLachlan’s Wintersong album.  It’s wonderful.  I also am enjoying Bebo Norman’s Christmas… From the Realms of Glory.  I intended to buy Barenaked Ladies’ Barenaked for the Holidays from an Amazon sale, but I couldn’t find a Linux version of their download client for the distribution on my laptop, and I am too lazy to boot Windows just to download some music.  Maybe I’ll download it from my desktop computer, which runs Kubuntu.

Now I’m just rambling.  The end.