Live from Austin!

I did one of those online religion questionnaires. I’m not going to reproduce the whole list of what it suggested for me; the interesting part is it rated Buddhism above Secular Humanism. (Specifically, Therevada Buddhism.)

Intellectually, that’s spot on, but the problem I always have is observance. Somehow I seem to be unable to sustain a practice of regular meditation. And without at least that, I don’t see that I could honestly describe myself as a Buddhist.

On the plus side, I managed to keep exercising through until the Christmas vacation; and now that the new year has started and my back has settled down a bit, I’m back to exercising daily, at least during the week. (It didn’t happen this weekend, for various timing reasons.)

Most people manage to keep going to church or otherwise practicing religion, but fail to exercise. I suppose I should consider myself lucky that my problem is the other way around.

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.

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 just picked up some more Christmas music from the Amazon MP3 store. For all that I like the iTunes Music Store, the Amazon MP3 store is better in every way.

First off, the selection is far, far better. I say that because I don’t buy DRM I can’t easily remove, so the iTMS’s rather anemic selection of “iTunes Plus” albums compares badly to Amazon’s library.

Secondly, there’s the format issue. For all that 256kbps AAC is theoretically better than 256kbps MP3, in practice I tend to encode with LAME’s standard preset, which averages less than 256kbps and is practically indistinguishable from CD in my personal testing. I think it’s easy to be too picky about digital audio. If I could approach my vinyl-buying self of 1983 and offer him his record library in 160kbps MP3s on an iPod, he’d leap at the chance. So given that the quality is good enough, I’d rather have MP3s I can play anywhere than AAC files I can only play most places.

Amazon have the convenience angle sorted too. In fact, it’s a little bit too convenient–it’s one click to buy an album once you install their downloader. The downloader automatically files everything neatly in folders by artist and album, and adds the tracks to iTunes when it’s done.

But enough about the technical jiggery-pokery. The actual music is what counts. First of all I picked up the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s album of music from A Charlie Brown Christmas. I’m not a jazz fan, and I’m not a big fan of the TV adaptation of Peanuts either, but somehow the soundtrack is perfect.

Next I picked up a couple of Cocteau Twins Christmas singles from a compilation. This is where digital downloads really shine–I can buy two songs for 89¢ each rather than a 4-CD compilation I don’t want.

I then went looking for quirky Christmas music, and found Tis The Season For Los Straitjackets.  I already have a Tijuana Brass Christmas album and a two different Moog Christmas albums. I’m kinda disappointed that Señor Coconut hasn’t tried his hand at a Kraftwerk Christmas album yet.  Ah well, at least there’s the 8bits of Christmas.

Also in my collection are Mark Mothersbaugh’s Joyeux Mutato, and the Illegal Art A MUTATED CHRISTMAS release. Plus, of course, a hefty dose of bootleg/mashup Christmas tracks downloaded from the web.

If anyone has any other recommendations for quirky but listenable Christmas albums, please post ‘em.

While we were in England, we got the train from Bournemouth to visit London.

London was an important part of my life as soon as I was old enough to be allowed to travel there without adult supervision. Some people are naturally country folk, some people are city people; even though I grew up in small villages and quaint towns, that was never where I really wanted to be.

I was curious to see how London had changed since I last saw it, nearly 10 years ago. We arranged to stay overnight with Shimrit in Stoke Newington, which Sara amusingly misheard as “Stoat Newington”.

Memories fade, and my main reason for going to London was to take my new video camera and visit a bunch of familiar places and record them; the streets, the buildings, the traffic, the crowds.

We arrived at Waterloo Station, so we started off by wandering towards the Thames and taking a look at the London Eye. The Eye had been built some time after I left the country. I’d seen it on Doctor Who, but not in real life. We didn’t actually go up in it; there was a long queue, and the ride itself would have taken another half hour or so out of our busy schedule. There were more important places to see.

We crossed over to the Houses of Parliament. They were protest-free, thanks to the new “Serious Organized Crime and Police Act”, which bans such serious crimes as holding up a banner outside Parliament. We continued on to Parliament Square, where some Iraq war protesters were quietly camped out along the fence facing Parliament. Across the street, heavily armed police kept everyone away from their elected representatives.

We turned right and headed along Whitehall, past the Treasury and Cabinet Office. Some tourists were gawping at guardsmen outside Horse Guards; it’s good to see that the Queen is doing her duty and keeping the Colour regularly Trooped. We passed the old War Office; and defra, who were probably busy panicking over the latest outbreak of foot and mouth.

Trafalgar Square was disappointingly blemished by scaffolding, tarpaulins and wooden hoardings. It was also full of sky rats, of course, but they’re expected, so you can’t really call them a disappointment. We stopped at a small Italian restaurant nearby for a spot of lunch, then continued towards Leicester Square.

As we walked past the Odeon towards Piccadilly Circus, everything started to get very familiar, and I started to get tearful. The Swiss Centre is still as it was, and the Trocadero hasn’t changed much. Apparently the former is due to be modernized a bit, so I was probably lucky to get to experience it in its retro cuckoo clock glory.

We visited tate modern, of course. One thing we always missed in Boston was a decent modern art gallery, and Austin isn’t much better, though the Blanton does try.

By the evening, we were exhausted. We had some vegetarian curry at a restaurant near Shimrit’s pad, then crashed on the futon.

The next day we tried to take things a little easier, and started off at Oxford Circus for a day of shopping.

Now, I could be misremembering, but it seemed to me that the crowds were far worse than ten years ago. It was a rainy English summer day, but the herds of people reminded me more of the run-up to Christmas. We struggled towards Tottenham Court Road, ducking into stores here and there.

Given the current exchange rate, we tried to buy as little as possible; but inevitably, there were books, CDs and DVDs unavailable in the US which we were unable to resist. We went in to HMV, but tried to limit ourselves to stuff with a single digit price.

We had lunch at The Plaza, which had mysteriously moved the food court up to the second floor and made the basement vanish entirely. Baked potatoes. They’re not nearly as popular in the US. I used to buy one most Saturdays, from a guy with a cart in the Market Square in Cambridge.

Tottenham Court Road is still just like it used to be. I even recognized several of the gadget stores. The infamous Centre Point is still there, and still unnavigable by foot. The Telecom Tower is still visible from Oxford Street, but sadly sanity has prevailed and its existence is no longer an official secret.

The biggest change to London is that there are now coffee shops everywhere. Back in the 90s I had to bring an espresso machine back with me from Italy; now, you can’t walk for more than a minute or two without finding somewhere offering Illy or some other variety of “Genuine Italian espresso”. And tasty snacks, too. I definitely approve.

One good English food item I had forgotten about until I saw them at Waterloo Station was the pasty. I wonder if there’s somewhere in Austin that will sell me a good pasty?

Anyhow, we finished up our day with a little book shopping at Foyle’s and Borders, then got the train back to Bournemouth.

Perhaps the kidney stone in the urethra of Nintendo’s supply chain is finally passing, because Wii is now starting to appear in stores. Controllers are readily available, and I managed to put in an order on Toys”R”Us’s web site during one of the 6 minute periods when the console was in stock. So, hopefully in a week or two we’ll be Wii-ing.

Ironically, I finally saw screen shots of a couple of PS3 games that interest me: Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction and LittleBigPlanet. And if Fatal Inertia ends up being disappointing, Sony are working on a real Wipeout for PS3. So I’m fairly optimistic that there will be a good reason to buy a PS3 some time before Christmas.

But right now, I’m much more interested in Zelda, Super Paper Mario, WarioWare, Elebits, Kororinpa, and Prince of Persia: Rival Swords (since I skipped Two Thrones). I also plan to visit some of the GameCube’s back catalog; the cube has been sitting idle since I failed to get component video to work, but the Wii should solve that problem.

Democratic Presidential hopeful John Edwards has spoken eloquently about the plight of the poor in America, saying that “poverty is the great moral issue of our century.” In his 2004 speech to the DNC, he said:

John Kerry and I believe that we shouldn’t have two different economies in America: one for people who are set for life, they know their kids and their grand-kids are going to be just fine; and then one for most Americans, people who live paycheck to paycheck.

As the official “John Edwards ‘08 Blog” put it recently:

Income inequality means more than 40 million people lacking health insurance or millions more having insufficient health insurance that does not cover preventive care. The gap between the income or wealth of those with the highest ammount (sic) of money in a society and those with the lowest can be a source of disease in itself.

[...] For instance, one study showed that a young man living in Bangladesh where poverty was severe but fairly uniform had a higher life expectancy than a young man living in Harlem, in the USA, a land where income disparity is the worst of any of the so called first world nations.

In the mean time, John Edwards has just purchased a 28,000 square foot mansion on an estate outside Chapel Hill NC, having sold his previous mansion for $5.2 million. The new Edwards estate is expected to be valued at over $6 million.

The main house itself is a mere 10,000 square feet or so. The rest of the floor space is in the recreation room—or rather, the 15,600 square foot recreation building. I can already picture Christmas with the Edwards family; perhaps the kids will play charades on one of the two stages, while John practices his speeches from the other. If they have guests for Christmas and run short of space, the master bedroom is 600 square feet, so they’ll always be able to put 10 extra king size double beds in there.

Of course, last month when John Edwards announced his intention to run for President, he didn’t do it from his home. No, he went to New Orleans, and helped a few poor people renovate a house that is probably smaller than the roofed walkway connecting the two sections of his own humble abode.

For some unaccountable reason there has been a little carping from the peanut gallery. People seem to think that the Edwards lifestyle is a little out of keeping from someone who says he’s so upset by income inequality. Me, I have no doubt that John Edwards cares deeply about the plight of the poor, and I’m sure he’ll be employing a dozen or so to sanitize his toilets, vacuum his rugs, clean his pool, and polish his basketball court. And his squash court. And his four storey observation tower.

Once again, reality is all too eerily reminiscent of a story from The Onion.

I’m too mathematically minded to gamble in Vegas, but I still find myself thinking that I’ve been unlucky when it comes to winning contests and prize draws. Rudyard Kipling would say that I won God’s lottery, but somehow that’s small consolation.

The feeling of unluckiness started in childhood. My cousin managed to win money on the Premium Bonds several times (as I recall), but I never did. I continued to enter pretty much any free contest I encountered, year after year, even if it meant actually reading the junk mail sent to me by Reader’s Digest. I don’t think I ever actually won anything, though.

Until last month.

One of my random interests is wristwatch design. Though my everyday watch was chosen for its rugged reliability, I’m always eyeing more impractical timepieces, like those covered on Wrist Dreams.

Said web site ran a contest last year. I entered, and in December I was rather startled to get e-mail saying I’d actually won. My prize was 1000100101, a retrofuturistic watch that looks like a miniature control panel from an old Sci Fi movie. It was supplied by Tokyoflash Japan, who seem to have cornered the market in amazingly interesting and odd watch designs.

The watch arrived in December. I deciphered the instructions and set the time and date, but quickly discovered a problem: the time simply didn’t advance, and after some random interval the watch would reset to 6:59. I contacted Tokyoflash and they sent me a replacement; I mailed back the broken one. The replacement arrived just after Christmas, as I missed the mailman on Christmas Eve.

The replacement watch works fine, and it’s great. It has a solid metal casing and a thick leather strap, and you can set it to randomly animate the time mit das blinkenlights every 15 minutes if it doesn’t seem to be getting enough attention. I’ve posted a picture. It’s the kind of thing I probably wouldn’t have bought for myself, but now that I’ve won it I like it a lot. So if you’re looking for an eye-catching watch for special occasions, I can recommend heading over to Tokyoflash’s web site and browsing around.

Now, off to enter more contests…

Guardian:

More people in Britain think religion causes harm than believe it does good, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today. It shows that an overwhelming majority see religion as a cause of division and tension — greatly outnumbering the smaller majority who also believe that it can be a force for good.

Well, that’ll give Richard Dawkins a merry Christmas.

We’ve been out getting the food for Christmas. The supermarket sells corn for squirrels—it even has a picture of a squirrel on the bag. I also picked up a big $3 bag of sunflower seeds, it’ll be their Christmas gift. The man standing behind us in the checkout queue was a squirrel skeptic. “You’re feeding rats!”

We got a fake tree this year, after Mythbusters covered how much damage a tree can do if it catches on fire and rothko decided she didn’t want a real tree in the house after all. Safety aside, there’s something to be said for not having needles everywhere, and having branches strong enough to hold up weightier ornaments. You can get Christmas tree smell as scented candles, and probably as an aerosol too.

The big excitement, though, is that we managed to get some mince pies this year. I don’t think I’d seen any since we visited my family for Christmas several years ago.

No Wii for Christmas. I tried stores, I tried online, no luck. I even tried the Amazon customers vote, which said I had a slightly better chance of winning the chance to buy a Wii than I had of getting hemorrhoids, which kinda makes me feel better that that sort of probability is by no means a sure thing.