Live from Austin!

The New York Times reports that most people have decided to sit out the HD format war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

I’m one of them. I remember DCC vs MiniDisc. MiniDisc won, if by ‘won’ you mean ‘lingered for a few years longer’. I also remember SACD vs DVD-Audio. Both of those lost, in that even people who have DVD players capable of playing DVD Audio (like me) typically don’t bother to hook them up to support it (like me). I saw an SACD player in someone’s house at Christmas, but it was being used as a CD player.

As the guy from Sony admits, the improvement from DVD to HD is pretty marginal unless your TV is 40″ or greater. This seems to match my conclusions from comparing 1080i OTA HDTV to upscaled DVD on our TV.

Then there are the downsides. The most obvious being the sluggish performance. For Blu-ray, typically it takes 30 seconds after hitting the power button before the disc tray opens; 30 more seconds after inserting the disc before you see menus. Of course, that’s the optimistic case, it can be much worse. Assuming it actually works at all. And to think I get impatient waiting 10 seconds for my DVD player.

Then there’s region encoding. I like being able to buy UK TV shows and movies legally and watch them, and I’m not prepared to go back to having a disc player that’s limited to US releases. So I’m not buying Blu-ray until region-free players become available.

Then there’s ripping video. Sure, it’s kinda specialized, but as iPods and portable video players and video-capable phones become more commonplace, it’s increasingly appealing. I did consider ripping some TV shows to watch on my BlackBerry on the plane this Christmas.

So as far as I’m concerned, wake me when the war is over and I can get a player that plays the winning format, in all regions, for under $300. Until then, I’m not interested. Even if I get a PS3, I can’t see myself buying any Blu-ray discs.

While some people see Jews everywhere–controlling the media, running international banking, spreading Communism and corrupting our precious bodily fluids–I have the opposite problem: I suffer from Jew blindness. It happens time and time again:

“Do you want to sign this Hannukkah card?”

“Sure… Wait, Bill is Jewish?!”

“Um… Yeah. Duh.”

Or another time:

“Wait, he speaks Hebrew?”

“Well, yes, obviously.”

“That’s kinda unusual isn’t it?”

“Not necessarily…”

“Oh, wait, I get it…”

It can be embarassing, so I’ve asked if there’s some obvious detection method I’m missing. The answer: if someone is your friend, you just know that kind of thing about them, apparently. Well, maybe. But to me, Jewishness is one of the least important things about a person. Oh, sure, if they keep kosher, that’s useful information; but I’m talking about ethnicity here, not observance.

Sometimes the signs are unmissable. If you’re Israeli, or your surname is Cohen, I’ll probably catch on. If I see a menorah or a dreidel, I’ll make the obvious deduction. But still, this December has resulted in the usual handful of  surprise revelations.

Truth is, I’ve often felt a little jealous of persons of the Hebrew persuasion. While I have a little Jewish ancestry a few levels up in my family tree, there’s no maternal line of descent; but when I learned this, I had to wonder if it was connected to my instinctive dislike of pork and bacon since early childhood. I’m undeniably bookish, a little neurotic, guilt-ridden, and prone to overintellectualizing things. I’ve been told I’d make a good Jew. And who wouldn’t want to be part of a rich and ancient culture that values scholarship? Obviously there have been a few downsides over the years, but I think that’s over with now, isn’t it?

So if I’ve said anything over the years that seemed like an insensitive slight against your Jewishness, please consider the possibility that I simply haven’t worked it out yet.

It wasn’t too bad when the wind stopped–only about -3 to -6 Celsius. When we arrived in Minneapolis, it was actually slightly above freezing.

I managed to screw up my back somehow en route. I’m not sure how. I think it was a combination of nasty airplane seats, improvised pillows, five hours of journey, and cold gray weather.

We managed to rent a Prius. The logic was that although it isn’t 4 wheel drive, on icy roads it’s better to know exactly how the car will handle and how effective the brakes are.

I can’t help wishing that the in-laws lived in one of the pretty parts of Minnesota, like the north east. Down in the south east it’s basically flat and empty.

There are quite a few Mexican businesses. What must it be like to move from Mexico to Minnesota?

On Christmas Day I was laying on the sofa at sara’s grandmother’s house. In my head was “Nation” by Colourbox. I remembered buying the CD in London, sitting on the train at Baker Street and unwrapping it. It must have been 20 years ago. Why remember it now? I have no idea.

I had a dream about a Matrix-like conspiracy. The part of Morpheus was played by Markus Kuhn. I don’t believe I’ve ever actually met him, and I’ve no idea why my subconscious decided to place him in my dreams, except that obviously it makes sense that he might crack the code keeping us in the matrix.

Last night I dreamed I was recording a complete cover version of Jean-Michel Jarre’s first two albums, but with updated instrumentation. Which, come to think of it, isn’t a bad idea, so long as it isn’t like the re-recorded Tubular Bells.

From the NorthWest airlines in-flight magazine:

Darn terrorists, I can’t even drink out of the toilet any more!

In Boston I bought a pair of Ecco shoes, only to have them fall apart in under a year.
Failing to learn the lesson, I bought some Ecco winter boots. They were fine when we left, only worn a few times, but after 8 days in Minnesota the soles have shredded away.
No more Ecco footwear for me. Sure, it’s light, but it’s expensive and it doesn’t last.

In Chicago, the police are asking loyal citizens to report anyone seen using a map or binoculars, or taking photographs.

Meanwhile in California, police are stopping drivers who have done nothing wrong in order to compliment their driving and give them $5 gift vouchers.

Both of these seem to me to be misguided. The former is obviously nutty; do they really want the 911 dispatchers bothered by some paranoid who just saw someone take a picture of Chicago’s art deco architecture?

The latter I can understand the motivation behind, but I can’t help wondering how many recipients will feel that the gift voucher is worth  the stress and/or anger of being pulled over. And for a US cop, any time you stop a vehicle, you’re risking your life; I can imagine them stopping a good driver who happens to have a car full of drugs, and having him freak out and start shooting.

Nice to see that the developers of Perl are still solving the important problems:

say() is a new built-in, only available when use feature 'say' is in effect, that is similar to print(), but that implicitly appends a newline to the printed string.

A new prototype character has been added. _ is equivalent to $ but defaults to $_ if the corresponding argument isn’t supplied.

–perldelta for 5.10

This is exactly the kind of stuff that made me give up on Perl. And mro is a pretty horrible new feature too.

There’s an article in the New Yorker that talks about the death of reading, and the effects of reading on the human mind. It covers a lot of interesting ground. For example:

In a study published this year, experimenters varied the way that people took in a PowerPoint presentation about the country of Mali. Those who were allowed to read silently were more likely to agree with the statement “The presentation was interesting,” and those who read along with an audiovisual commentary were more likely to agree with the statement “I did not learn anything from this presentation.” The silent readers remembered more, too, a finding in line with a series of British studies in which people who read transcripts of television newscasts, political programs, advertisements, and science shows recalled more information than those who had watched the shows themselves.

So Edward Tufte is right; even a well-delivered presentation is worse than a written report. Who’s to blame?

Researchers recently gave Michigan children and teen-agers home computers in exchange for permission to monitor their Internet use. The study found that grades and reading scores rose with the amount of time spent online. Even visits to pornography Web sites improved academic performance.

Awesome. But as the article points out, the act of reading is unnatural; humans only recently adapted to be able to do it. It may be that we will go back to a world similar to the pre-literate world, where reading is something done by a privileged few.

[And ironically, I initially managed to forget the link to the article. Maybe I've been watching too much TV.]

Yesterday I found out what tamales are. I am another step on the way to being a Texan. (Hey, if George Bush can do it, so can I.)

Today I started packing for Minnesota. I am somewhat concerned about whether I will be able to pack sufficient warm clothing.