Cables And Wires And Dongles Galore

Faithful readers will recall that I made the plunge into the world of high definition television recently. One of the first things that got hooked up to it was my son’s Wii (which is only 480p for those of you that follow these things).

We had the Magic League (remember them?) and one of the players was wearing an obscure tee shirt with an funny logo. He said it was based on a web cartoon called Making Fiends check them out). Curious, we wanted to watch some sample episodes so we fired up the Wii that has a built in web browser and started watching the deranged but funny cartoons. Unfortunately, the quality was fairly poor and the navigation really clunky. Wiimotes are great for playing games but lousy for typing in url’s.

A couple of weeks later, we were planning our summer vacation with two other families. We’re planning on sharing a vacation rental and we wanted to reach some consensus on which property to get. We used a video to S-video adaptor to send the signal from my wife’s four-year old MacBook to the TV. The image was also grainy, but serviceable. It was also awkward barking commands at my son who was sitting at the laptop running the mouse and keyboard.

I remembered that the TV has a VGA input suitable for a computer. I knew I had a spare VGA cable around but it turned out to be female to male and I needed male to male. Even more than that, the laptop has a non-standard outlet that Apple calls mini-VGA so I needed a mini-VGA to VGA converter and a VGA cable. I daisy-chained that all together and adjusted the resolution on the laptop. Voila! I was surfing the web in crystal clear full color.

My wife gave my the url of a YouTube video she wanted to watch. Youtube videos look awful on a bigscreen no matter what, but the tinny sound out of the laptop was something I could do something about. I had two choices. I could use a 1/8” stereo wire and run it straight from the laptop into the television or I could use a 1/8” jack to RCA cable splitter and use the auxiliary input to the home theater system. I settled on the latter even though YouTube video through anything is just as bad. What did sound good was the AOL.com full CD listening party stream of the new Hillary McRae album while I was surfing blogs with my feet up on the couch.

While I was at MallStoreOfWires I noticed that they had a very small USB cordless mouse. That would go a long way to freeing me from having to keep the laptop within arms distance. That took a certain amount of experimentation to learn that while the arm of the sofa made a terrible mouse pad, the seat cushion next to me worked fine. Coupled with a Bluetooth keyboard, I can be anywhere in the room as long as my eyesight is keen enough to read the text.

My wife also has a newer PowerBook from work that is, of course, incompatible with with all the adaptors for the MacBook. It’s video connection is mini-DVI which converts to standard DVI which then connects to the TV with a DVI to HDMI cable. The DVI cable resulted in some weird stuff. Program windows (like Firefox) that appeared on the laptop screen wouldn't show up on the television. But then the Mac program Dock only worked on the TV. It was like the set-up was haunted. I gave up and switched back to a VGA cable and fiddled with both the Mac and TV settings until I got a really great full screen image at 1280 x 768 (the internal video card will support higher resolutions, but the TV won't). Still, it's a great image.

So here is the full list of items sitting in the backet o’cables next to the TV:

Mini-VGA to S-video convertor
Mini-VGA to VGA convertor
Mini-DVI to S-video convertor
Mini-DVI to DVI convertor
6 foot DVI to HDMI cable
6 foot male to male VGA cable
6 foot male to female VGA cable
6 foot 1/8” stereo cable
6 foot 1/8” to RCA cable
6 foot S-video cable
USB mouse
Bluetooth keyboard

And that doesn’t include the various sundry Wii peripherals.

The point wasn't to brag or show more pictures of my BigAssTV, but to take some baby steps towards convergence and see what I could lash together using my existing consumer electronics inventory and some cables. Now that I've completed the proof of concept phase, I can move on to exploring online video options and go from there.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: Is a 48" monitor too much or not enough?

Tale Of Two Cameras

Just before I went to England I bought a new camera body. The Canon Kiss Digital N (the equivalent of the Rebel XT in the US) that I had bought in Japan three years ago had been in the shop three times for various things and parts were as slow as molasses coming in. So I sucked it up and bought a Rebel XTi which is essentially the same camera but with 10 megapixels instead of 8. The advantage here was that I could continue to use the lenses and accessories I already owned.

My wife had a very old Sony digital point and shoot that just went south on her. For a replacement, we wanted something not dependent on proprietary Sony MemoryStickDuoProPlus whatevers, so we went with the Panasonic DMC-TZ1 which is 6 megapixels and has a 10x optical zoom and uses standard SD cards.

We both took tons of pictures, me more than her, and we had over a thousand shots between us when we returned. As I was very slowly sorting them and uploading them to Flickr, I noticed something odd. For the most part when we took pictures of the same thing we usually had a different composition or emphasis. But these two pictures of the National Gallery were nearly identical.




The top one is mine and the lower one is hers. Click on either picture to be taken to the Flickr page or see the full image (warning: very large files) by clicking on either this link for mine or this one for hers. The Canon seems to have a slightly brighter exposure and a very different white balance, not that I understand what that terms mean. So I cropped a very small portion of each to see what I’m getting with my camera with nearly twice the megapixels and easily ten times the weight.



As you can tell, not much. I love my digital SLR because of its power and potential, but I’m still learning all the features of it. It seems that when you just need to capture some quick memories those little pocket cameras do just fine.

You can see more of my rather cloudy London pictures here. And be forewarned that I will be trickling out more in the weeks to come.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: What do you take pictures with?

Smuttiest Strip In Print

For a long time the comic strip Arlo and Janis has held the undisputed title of Smuttiest Strip In Print®. While 95% of this strip is typical domestic slice of life stuff, every now and then one slips past the censors. Like this one from last week:

Click on images for official site.

Someone please come up with the explanation that you can use to a comics editor that explains that this is not a reference to a little light bondage play that went wrong and eventually required that aid of paramedics, a locksmith, and/or a hacksaw.

But now a new strip has jumped into the breach. While Doonesbury is on yet another hiatus, the Washington Post has been running a test strip so new the ink is still wet. Daddy’s Home is about a work at home dad and the trials of tribulations of being in a non-traditional domestic relationship.

In many respects it resembles the similarly themed Adam@Home, but like Arlo and Janis, it occasionally goes to a dark space. Take this one from yesterday:
Nameless Dad is getting all excited (literally) about the possibility of an unexpected Special Occasion Sex Act only to have his hopes dashed by his smirking wife that just wants to catch a little late night television to help her fall asleep.

This would be a slightly risqué one-off it weren’t for a previous strip where Mom and Dad find some time for a little kitchen countertop afternoon delight that plays out like this:
Yikes. Nothing deflates a work at home dad like a negative reference to his staying power. No wonder he spends his days lusting after cooking show hotties.Yummo. I'm sure the lotion bottle and box of tissues are just off-panel.

And being home all day he could be chasing after the other daytime denizens of his illustrated Wisteria Lane if it weren’t for his cock-blocking kid.
So in a three week trial we have learned that Daddy is a sexually frustrated couch potato who is regularly ridiculed by his sassy wife. It’s as if Ted Forth never got a new job. And speaking of My Hero, there is nothing like a business trip with the wife to put a little lead in your strategic sourcing pencil. This is the smirk of a very lucky lady, or at least one that is about to get lucky.

In the meantime, Arlo needs to watch his back. Daddy’s Home. And he’s gonna give you a run for your money.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: What other comics work blue?

The Prettiest Cherry Tree

I’ve lived in the DC/Baltimore area for over a dozen years now and
Spring gets to me every year. Florida had two seasons, Drought and Lawnmowing. Maryland gets the full four and nothing signals rebirth like the cherry blossoms.



Anytime there is a clear day during peak blooming I load up the car, fight the tourists, and head down to the Tidal Basin. Two weeks ago was such a day. I bribed my wife with the promise of a dinner out and we headed down to the District. Our favorite monument in Washington is the relatively new FDR Memorial along the east side of the basin where the cherry trees are the thickest.



The Park Police have been playing with the traffic patterns to try to avoid gridlock, but I found a space right near the water. I got my pictures, but before heading out I decided to take one lap of Hains Point which has as many cherry trees as the Tidal Basin if not more so. By now it was late in the afternoon and things were starting to wind down. There was a little bit of traffic but parking was plentiful.



As I drove around, there was one tree in particular stood out. By the time I pulled over and got out my camera I was in line behind two other groups posing in front of the low hanging trees. There was something about this tree in particular that entranced people. Everyone that passed by it stopped to pose. I decided that it must be The Prettiest Cherry Tree On Hains Point.



The cherry blossoms have to be one of the most photographed annual events in DC and I have done my part. On my Flickr account, I have whittled the over 200 hundred pictures I took down to the very best 64. It’s no coincidence that several feature my wife but only one features my goofy mug. The most meta-picture is this one of a guy taking a picture of a girl taking a picture of her friend. I bet someone was taking a picture of me.



This annual Rite of Spring never gets old and beauty never gets tiresome to look at.

BlatantCommentWhoring™: What do you like about Spring?

BooksFirst - March 2008

Books Bought
The Making of Pride and Prejudice
The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett
Rock On by Dan Kennedy

Books Read
Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett
King Of The Vagabonds by Neal Stephenson
A Salty Piece Of Land by Jimmy Buffett

Comments

I’m still trying to decide whether I like Terry Pratchett or not. Each of his Discworld novels skewers some satire worthy topic. The target of Moving Pictures is, unsurprisingly, motion pictures. A hole to another dimension allows enterprising hustlers to create a fantasy version of the silent films. Hilarity does not ensue. Most of the humor is milked from how movies would be made in a technology free world. Demons paint the pictures and candles project the pictures onto enormous sheets. I think the Flintstones had then down cold ten million years ago. In this book, movies are made on a back lot and they bear a suspicious similarity to our cinema classics. The centerpiece is a war epoch involving winds that have gone.

The only interesting character is a talking (and smart-talking) dog decidedly not in the Rin Tin Tin vein (although there is one of those as well). Another subplot is about trolls that start taking romantic movie conventions to heart. With so much material to use, the story just ignores its promise and becomes a chaotic confusing action sequence. Maybe it’s truer to the movies than I realized.

As you can tell by the Books Bought list, I haven't given up on Pratchett, but I have realized that his scattershot approach to satire can sometimes miss.

Neal Stephenson is one of my favorite authors. Snow Crash is a genre shifting classic and The Diamond Age is far too under-rated. I've blogged about seeing him at a book signing for Cryptonomicon. I even have autographed hardbacks of all three volumes of The Baroque Cycle, but I just can’t get through the first book Quicksilver. I’ve started it about three times and each times I got a little deeper into it, but never quite caught a head of steam. I had heard that if I could make it through the first third, it got much better.

Then I found that in addition to the hardback and the trade paperback, the publisher has issued each volume in a multi-part mass-market paperbacks. Since I had made it through most of the first section, I finished it off and move onto part two which is published as King Of The Vagabonds. This section introduces Jack Shaftoe, a literally half-cocked ne-er-do-well that runs across the preternaturally clever and improbably virginal Eliza. And the virgin part is mostly a technicality. As the middle section of a book would be expected to, the section ends in a cliff hanger that sets up future action.

Counting the paperback version sounds like a little of a cheat, but it lets me break this massive tome into bite-size chunks that will help me appreciate what is reputed as contemporary tour-de-force classic.

Like most people, I have a pile of books on the nightstand. Sometimes they approach archeological strata in height. For quite a while the base layer has been Jimmy Buffet’s novel A Sandy Piece of Land. A better title would have been Lucky Bastards because every character in it is the result of credulity stretching good fortune. People inherit, win and stumble into awesome careers and situations. Everyone is the best or greatest at whatever they attempt. Nobody lacks for excitement and the lack of true suspense or drama makes this book more of a fantasy than anything Terry Pratchett has written.

The ostensible plot revolves around a Montana cowboy on the lam in the Caribbean who gets dragged into a hunt for a Fresnel lens for an abandoned lighthouse. Along the way he runs across a menagerie of misfits and kooky characters that inexplicably always come to his aid. Buffett has invested a lot of energy in giving each of these people really elaborate back stories that he then regurgitates in clunky expository passages. Tons of arcane research into lighthouses, seaplanes, fishing and anything else shiny that has ever caught Jimmy's eye are just thudded into the story. No tall tale or shaggy dog story is too well-known to not be reworked into a plot point. He spends five pages rehashing the plot of The Man Who Would Be King. There is even a suspiciously familiar pop-star that travels around the world in a seaplane just to save the day.

While I love Jimmy’s island tinged music, it doesn’t stretch well to novel length.

NCCCCC: Catch That Cliche

After counting the votes, we have the finalists in the National Corniest Cliche Comic Character Countdown and they are a motley bunch of stereotypes. Many people were frustrated with the No Patterson Rule. For Better or For Worse is a tough strip to pigeon-hole in these categories because it is part humor strip, part soap opera, and all lame. And know that it is in the zombie strip limbo of the living dead, the strip is beginning to compete with itself in any topic where spleens can be vented.

We had plenty of write-ins, most of them very well-reasoned. There were over a thousand votes cast, so I feel I got a real slice of the comics-loving community. And they love to hate the losers. Lets go through the finalists and then we can decide who is the Best (or Worst) of Show

	Alarming Alcoholic – Leroy Lockhorn Despite having an early lead, Andy Capp got edged out by Leroy Lockhorn. Now both of these characters have a glass in their hand as part of their defining character traits, but Leroy is bitterer and far more likely to be in an out of control stupor. I really wish Andy had won because he is a more iconic figure with far better clip art available online, but the readers have spoken.
	Dopiest Dad – Dagwood Dagwood would give anyone a run for the money in dopiest anything category. There is not anything he does that he doesn’t do lazily or incompetently. Except perhaps make oversized sandwiches. Happily married but dim-witted fathers are one of the last safe objects of derision in America and Dagwood has been blazing that trail for over severty-five years. Other dopey dads owe him a debt of gratitude for making them look good in comparison.
	Perplexing Pet – Marmaduke As I mentioned in the comments, this was Marmaduke’s category to lose and he won by the largest margin of any category. Even the much maligned Garfield got out-voted two-to-one. How this hyperactive Great Dane has managed to milk one joke for decades is the real mystery. And nothing I can say about the sexual subtext of the strip can match this.
	Kid to Kick In The Ass – Dolly I just could not fit everyone’s favorite loathsome brat into this category. I could have doubled the field and still not pleased everybody. Danae from Non Sequitor was favorite write-in. Still, Dolly is a worthy winner in the toughest division.
	Judge’s Choice – Flagstone Family At least one reader caught on that the candidates seemed to include an awful lot of folk from Hi and Lois and this was no accident. While no character finished higher than fourth in their respective category (Thirsty at least beat out all the other Walker/Browne lushes (a disturbingly common character type among that clan)), the entire Hi and Lois cast epitomizes lazy caricature driven characterization. For over a half century, this white-bread family has been a collection of “types” that went obsolete somewhere around the British Invasion. Even as they have tried to adapt and stay relevant, they remain constantly at least one decade behind the times.

So make a choice and check some boxes and we’ll see what you think.

In the meantime I’m going to start compiling a list of divisions for next year’s tourney. Some ideas I have kicking around are: Most Unforgivable Patterson, Swishiest Soap Star, Least Fulfilled Female, Most Dysfunctional Family. Go ahead and give me some other ideas. Until then, read my regular stuff and be sure to come back next year.

NCCCCC: Kid You'd Like To Kick In The Ass

Comics are for kids. At least that is the common perception. That is why they are full of kids that so smart-assed that normal parents would have taken a strap to their little butts long ago. There is a mile wide chasm between the genius of Calvin and Hobbes and the puerility of most comic kids. Let’s look at the most egregious.

Dennis The Menace

Back in the day, Dennis was a candidate to become a jumpsuit wearing juvie in a youth boot camp. Nowadays his behavior wouldn’t get a Ritalin prescription from the most pill happy Dr. Feelgood. Still, if I were Mr. Wilson, I would have given Dennis a real close look at the wood chipper a long time ago.

Dolly (The Family Circus)
Being the most annoying kid in the Family Circus is like being named Top Dictator of The Twentieth Century, the competition is keen, but it’s not much to brag about. If you imagine that the whole family gets their well water from a dioxin poisoned brownfield and each kid is representing his own particular symptoms of brain damage, the strip begins to make sense. Dolly’s repertoire of spoonerisms, mangled syntax and eye-rollingly demented observations are enough to get the very front seat on the short bus.

Marvin
Marvin is at best Garfield in human form. At worst, he is the most idiotic toddler ever to have an internal monologue. When he was a baby, he just sat around in fully loaded diapers philosophizing. He is now a preschool toddler, but the quality of the wit hasn’t improved any. He may have graduated from diapers, but the stink on the comics page is still there.

Dot and Ditto (Hi and Lois)
You may not see anything particularly noxious in the Flagstone twins at first, but if you pay attention you will see that they encompass all the annoying habits of all comic kids. They disrespect their elders, they abuse and torment siblings and they fight with each other in a disturbingly incestuous way. And they’re named after punctuation, for heaven’s sake.

Edison Lee (The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee)

The oddly dichotic Edison Lee and his titular brilliant mind is a reader nominee. The strip may not be syndicated widely, but those that have read it despise it with the intensity of a thousand suns. Its raison d'être seems to disguise Mallard Fillmore's hateful politics in a family friendly wrapper. This boy idiot/genius is a particularly unfunny walking talking point that belongs in the Limbaugh Letter rather than on a comics page where people want to be entertained, not lectured to.

Ruthie
The One Big Happy star is here based on the hatred of loyal reader Demetrious X who is saving a special circle in Hell for this malapropism prone misfit. Ruthie bundles tons of annoying features in one little bundle of spite. In addition to her sub-Dolly puns, she is mean, bitter, and vindictive. I’m not sure this comic doesn’t violate the “currently in print” rule since all the strips at the official website are reruns, but we are leaving it in to give it the benefit of the doubt. After all, the fact that I can’t tell the difference is telling enough.

This category is perhaps the most competitive to date. Be sure to give each character full consideration (if you can stomach it) before casting the most annoying one down the well.



Voting in all categories will end sometime Saturday evening, so make sure you have picked someone in each of the other categories.

NCCCCC: Perplexing Pet Playoff

The Perplexing Pet category has been the hardest bracket of the National Corniest Cliché Comic Character Countdown to seed. Many strips have pets, but they rarely have major roles except for getting sick at inopportune times and ruining planned Paris vacations. Most of the time if they aren’t the star, they are just visual background.

Some of the pet-oriented strips are among the best in print. Snoopy in his day, for better or for worse, became THE breakout Peanuts character and made Charles Schultz a very wealthy if rather troubled man. And speaking of For Better Or For Worse, the death of Farley affected a generation more than Ol’ Yeller. Last year Bucky Katt mopped the floor of the National Coolest Comics Character finals with the other contestants.

On the other hand, there are strips with pets that are among the most reviled characters on the funny pages. And others that just make you scratch your head in confusion. Let’s have a look at some of those.

Garfield
One of the most hated yet inexplicably popular “talking” animal characters ever. The very young and the feeble-minded find him hilarious and Jim Davis has been trying to breathe some new life into the franchise, but the damage has been done. Garfield is arguably not even a cat. I’m not aware of too many Monday-hating, lasagna-loving, “bachelor-baby”ing real life cats out there. But he is a character in all senses of the word and a merchandising juggernaut.

Heathcliff
Perhaps the best way to describe Heathcliff is as a mute, less funny Garfield. Seemingly slightly more cat-like than Garfield, Heathcliff is more of a delinquent alley cat with airs. The pantomime style doesn’t give him much personality to work with and he makes the least of it.

Earl and Mooch (Mutts)
Mutts is a comic strip loved by those pretentious snobs that lament the lost artistic glory days of the funny pages. The strip is beautifully drawn in a gorgeous retro style with lots of in-jokes that date back to The Yellow Kid. But have this cat and dog duo (without looking, tell me which is Earl and which is Mooch) ever done anything funny? Unless you count talking with a lisp as appropriate 21st century comedy material. They are loved as a concept but the strip lacks sound execution.

Dawg (Hi and Lois)
Even the name is completely generic (and highly offensive to those of us who despise the University of Georgia athletic program). Dawg is the Flagstone family pet that mostly interacts with pre-verbal Trixie, which makes him about as important as the sunbeam.

Marmaduke
Marmaduke is a Really Big Dog.

Pick which pet belongs in the pound for crimes against comics. This category is tough to give firm direction on, so leave your thought process in the comments.


And if you haven’t voted yet in the Alarming Alcoholic or Dopey Dad category yet, make sure to visit those.