Is there a Vespa in your future?March 30, 2008
Meredith have been toying around with the idea of getting a Vespa. At first I thought they were sort of dorky and dangerous, but I'm really starting to warm up to the idea. They get about 60 mpg, which is twice the fuel economy of a Civic, and as long as you're not using them on fast, busy roads, they're relatively safe. They also solve the problem of wanting to be a 1 car family without losing all of the flexiblity of having two vehicles.
Update: It's looking more and more like we're going to take the Vespa plunge! Meredith has got the MTO motorcycle book and is already half way done, and we've been in to KW Vespa to gawk at them.
In the Shadow of the Moon
March 3, 2008
While we were at Blockbuster on Sunday evening, my dear wife pointed out to me that a new documentary had just been release on DVD: In the Shadow of the Moon. We just watched it tonight and it was fantastic. It helped bridge the gap for me between the space age of my growing up years (the Space Shuttle) and what happened only 12 years before I was born: Mankind walking on the moon. Although the visuals in this movie were superb, what really struck me were the interviews with the astronauts, now in their late 70s. These men are likable, dramatic people who have learned over the past 40 years how to tell the story in a way that brings you to the moon's surface with them. Some highlights:
  | When in orbit around the Earth, the Earth's horizon only has a slight curvature to it. But as you move away from the Earth, that curvature quickly grows until eventually you see the whole circle of the planet's circumference. |
| While looking back at the Earth, it hanging there, completely surrounded by the blackness of space, the astronauts were overcome with a sense of how fragile our small plant is. |
| The moon as the most dramatic, beautiful, untouched dessert you've ever seen. |
| The biggest thrill of exhileration being on the way back to Earth. |
| An astronaut, after returning from the moon, going to a shopping mall, buying an ice cream, and then just sitting there appreciating all of the people. |
| Astronauts talking about there being "two moons" in their head. The first moon is what you see when you look up in the sky, and when astronauts who have been to the moon look up, they see the "first moon"... and they can't really relate that image to their experience on the surface of the moon, the "second moon", so to speak. |
|
 |
HD DVD *sniff*March 3, 2008
Life is like that: After a year of waiting for the Bluray VS HD DVD standoff to offer a victor, you go and buy the Xbox HD DVD attachment, and less than a month later, Warner Brothers flips over to Bluray and the deal is done: Bluray wins and you own a $200 piece of plastic. What a bummer.
Disappointment aside, it has been fun to play with the new technology. Jumbo Video just down the street rents HD DVDs, and I have enjoyed a few so far: Mission Impossible III was fantastic, Transformers was great, and King Kong was, well, a little boring, but with great visuals. I'm amused at the "online content" features... the first time you start some HD DVDs, it says "Downloading content updates", and this little progress bar zips across as it goes online to download information from the movie studio. What a strange concept!
As for the visuals, they are great, but it makes you realize that for a lot of fast-motion or low-detail scenes, even plain old DVD offers excellent quality. Where the difference really shows through is text, especially small text with fine detail. Because of this, menus on HD DVDs look far superior to those of regular DVDs. During the movie itself, however, only some scenes show a noticeable difference. Most times you just get a warm fuzzy "I think this looks a little bit better than regular DVD" sense.
older >>
