Tag Archives: tech

Waiting on UPS

So more than ten years ago one of my favorite purchases was a region free DVD player. As you are probably aware DVDs are generally coded to play only in certain regions, this is so the rights for publication can be managed worldwide, but it does lead to the issue where thing you really really want to watch are not available in your region. My sweetie-wife is an anglophile and so buying a player that could playback DVD from around the world was a plus.

Over the last few years the region free player has been slowly failing. Sometime not playing, sometime playing but with the colors shifted. Thing came to a head when I purchased my new television. The new set has no component connections and attempting to connect the region free DVD player through other methods has failed.

This past weekend I researched and ordered a new region free player, but this time it is a capable of Blu-rays as well as DVDs. After all if you’re going to buy a new product, buy one that’s going to do more and last.

I have also already ordered my first international Blu-Ray, Quatermass and the Pit, one of my favorite SF films and not available in the US on Blu-ray. The disc should arrive today, sadly the player, coming by UPS ground, is scheduled for Saturday.

Oh well, I think I know my Sunday Night movie feature this week.

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Product Review: TCL P605 55″ Television

Nearly two weeks ago I replaced my 10 year old 42″ LG LCD TV with a 55″ 4K TCL P605. The LG had served me well and good for most of those 10 years but an annoying backlight issues had degraded the screen image and it was time for something new.

The TCL is a 4K television providing a resolution nearly double of current HD standard and it comes with HDR, High Dynamic Range, for better contracts and black levels.

I paid the extra money to not only have the television, and its news stand, delivered, but also to have everything assembled and put into place. The savings in frustration more than made up for that extra cost.

The TV is working beautifully. The picture is sharp, clear, and with great color and detail reproduction. I have watched everything from native 4K content all the way down to 480i broadcast signals of classic programming. The classic programming is fuzzy and it is amazing that we watched that content at all. My Blu-rays look fantastic, Sunday Night I watched my copy of the 1973 The Wicker Man and it was the best I had seen outside of a cinema. Sitting about 9 feet from the screen the apparent size is great for an immersive experience, making late night movie watching a pleasure. The thin black frame of the Tv vanishes in a dark room, so there is the illusion of an image simple hanging in the void.

The P605 is also a smart TV, meaning it has a number of apps and this model uses the Roku system for streaming content, either through a direct connection or via a wireless network. I use a wireless connection and here again the TV works great.

It has been more than 8 years since my wife and I subscribed to a cable TV service, and now everything we watch is either streamed or on disc. The built-in Roku works well with our streaming services, Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu. (Though I found the Hulu interface not as user friendly as the one on our Apple TV.) Streamed the 4K content plays perfectly and we’ve enjoyed a lot of cool programming on our new television.

I have also connected my new Xbox One to the TV and again it passes all expectations but of course no product is perfect.

The set lacks component inputs making it difficult to connect older devices such as my region-free DVD player. That’s going to have to go through my AV receiver. Also the screen has a bit of gloss to it so you’ll need to be aware of light sources and their positions to avoid glare. However, those are fairly minor issues.

In short I have no regrets buying a ‘budget’ television. This monitor gives me great image, and presentation with a very affordable price.

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New Television

So, one of the reason why I worked so man overtime hours towards the end of last year was to purchase a new television.

My current TV is ten years old, a 42″ HD sett that has worked very well for most of its life and I would have kept going with this one except for a recent fault. In the last two years or so it developed an issue with the backlight that illuminates the screen and that cause a difference in brightness near the top of the monitor. Most of the time it was scarcely noticeable but during dark scenes it became impossible to ignore. (Or at least for me anyway.)

Yesterday I went to a local electronics retailer and purchased my new set and a stand to support it. (Our current stand has begun to bow and the larger set would be too much for it.)

Delivery and set will happen on Saturday morning after that I will be in the 55″ 4K zone for my movie watching. And for a Cinephile like myself that is going to be glorious.

 

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A Day Long Remembered

Well, we hope that today is one that will be long remembered for the successful flight of the Falcon Heavy.

At about 10:30 am Pacific time, if weather and technical issues allow, SpaceX will attempt to flight the Flacon Heavy, which is essentially three Falcon 9 strapped together. Unlike other large rockets with large side boosters, SpaceX, as they have done on a number of Falcon 9 missions, will attempt to recover the rockets after flight, landing two of them back at the Kennedy Space Center and the center rocket on the floating barge, Of Course I Still Love You.

The upper stage, after loitering in orbit for six hours will boost the test payload into an elliptical orbit that nears, but does not intersect with the planet Mars. That upper stage will not be recovered and the payload will coast between Earth and Mars into the indefinite future.

Here’s video from SpaceX, with a hat tip to the late David Bowie, showing the planned mission.

 

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Say “Thank you, Mr. Reagan.”

Oh no, this is not about any of the current healthcare debates of tax cut proposals. I have a feeling that most of you reading this own a smart phone and that you can take advantage of that device’s GPS for turn-by-turn navigation. This is a feature that has not only enabled a great deal of modern commerce but has saved lives. For this you say ‘Thank you, Mr. Reagan.’

The Global Positioning System, GPS, was developed for the U.S. Military to allow the United States to have pinpoint accuracy on all it’s assets around the world. It is what is referred to in mil-speak as a ‘force multiplier.’ A factor that allows a force to fight as though their number were actually larger than are present. Opening that up to everyone’s use is a major policy and that policy change was ordered by President Reagan after a tragedy.

September 1 1983 KAL flight 007 wandered off course and into the airspace claimed by the USSR. Mistaking the passenger jet for a spy plane the Soviets shot it down killing all 269 aboard. I order to avoid such tragedies in the future the Reagan administration opened the GPS up to world-wide civilian use.

Say ‘Thank you, Mr. Clinton.’

The system opened to civilian use by Reagan was slightly altered to degrade performance. Non-military users could not locate their position with an accuracy greater than a few hundred meters. This prevented navigation errors such as with KAL 005 but preserved a significant degree of superiority for the U.S. Military. In 1996 the Clinton administration, recognizing the huge private sector potential, removed the additional signal that degraded the service for civilians. Now everyone with a GPS receiver could pinpoint there location to within a new meters. You know, that thing your phone does all the time.

What’s the point of all this?

Conservatives and Liberal can both have terrific ideas, either can advance the common good and either can see beyond petty self-interests. Only a partisan fool blithely disregards something solely because it came from across the aisle. Every idea, suggestion, and should be judges on its own merits.

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About That Bomb

Wow.

It’s interesting watching my social media feed explode over an big explosion. I imagine if there had been the some social media during the Clinton administration I would have watched a similar explosion from the other side of the spectrum when he sent cruise missiles into the same region of the world in a failed attempt to kill Osama Bin Laden I do remember conservative friends announcing with absolute certainty that the attacks had been nothing but ‘wag the dog’ distractions from his scandals just as some liberals friends are equally certain that the MOAB was used to distract from which ever Trump scandal holds their attention. (He has so many that it’s really a buffet of concerns.)

However it also not only possible but likely that the use of this particular weapons system has nothing to do with the current president and everything with conditions on the ground and the judgment of local commanders.

First Off, the phrase ‘largest non-nuclear’ is a pretty much useless comparing things of vastly different scales. An atomic bomb like the ones used to end WWII has a yield of about 12-15 kilotons. That is the explosion is equal to 12 to 15 THOUSAND tons of TNT, the MOAB is purely conventional. It has 22,000 lbs of explosives or 11 tons, so while it may be the largest non-nuclear bomb in our inventory it is still less that one thousandth the yield. It’s kind of like comparing a penny to a ten dollar bill. That sensational headline got your attention but it did not inform you.

Second: The president does not need congress’ approval to dispatch military force. He orders the military congress declares war, but there’s this nasty confusing grey area where the military gets used but no war has been declared. After Vietnam there was the War Powers act but it has never been fully vetted by the Supreme Court.

Three: Even if the President needed to have congressional approval you do know he was granted that in 2001 don’t you? That Authorization of Military Force that Bush got after 9/11, it’s still in effect. I hate the very concept of a Trump Presidency but he’s got the authority, though it should have never been given to him, to do exactly this.

Four: This bomb has a very limited utility. It is far too large to be dropped from any bomber. To get the monster to the target they military has to use a cargo plane, and that means you can’t use it in a place where the enemy has the capacity to shoot down your bombers. It doesn’t have great penetration so it’s best used against soft targets, it has a very large area of effect and so you can’t use it where the target are mingled with non-targets.

Now, all that said we should wait for verified reports about the why of the attack. Good judgment follows from facts not fancy.

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Another Benefit from the Internet Age

Clearly there are nearly countless benefits from the internet and the vast and myriad  ways we have to spread information these days, but there is one in particular I want to look at briefly in this post.

I have been a cord cutter (someone without cable television service) for several years. All of my video entertainment arrives on disc or by way of a streaming service. For the last couple of weeks I have been watching various film noirs on the HULU plus service. Some were good, some were not, but the general mood and atmosphere I am marinating in will be helpful in crafting my SF/Noir novel.

I think all of the films I have been watching on HULU are ones that fell into the public domain when the original rights holders opted to not extend their copyrights. Just a few years ago that would have cast these unprofitable properties into the trash bin of entertainment history, subject only to the occasional late night broadcast as part of a station’s ‘Movie ’til Dawn.’ (And not even that as the infomercial killed that.)

Now, thanks to streaming and the status of public domain, these films are available to new audiences. (I particularly liked The Red House. Both a noir and a snap shot of rural living in the mid 40s.)

Many more public domain movies are available on Youtube and sites such as Public Domain Movies.com. True more than 9/10s of these are truly terribly movies, but one usually pans through a lot of mud to find a single nugget.

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Quick Impression Apple TV

I have been a fan of streaming over traditional cable for sometime. (The last time I had cable TV was 2012 for a few weeks.) I prefer the control streaming and discs give me over what and when I watch. This week because my sweetie-wife and I didn’t want to delay in out Game of Thrones fix I picked up an Apple TV and subscribe to HBO Now.

The Verdict?

I heartily approve of the Apple TV. The onyl thing that would improve it would be the addition of Amazon Prime streaming, otherwise I have found no flaws and had no complaints.

It’s easy to set up. Easy to use, and I have a ton of options. This is working out so much better than my previous streaming device – an Xbox 360. Integrating with iMac and other Apple devices is just a bonus, but it’s really nice being able to stream my iTunes content to my living. Watching Doctor Who has just gotten loads easier.

 

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Warning Educational Materials ahead

So Sunday I was tooling youtube and other video hosting sights, looking for interesting films and such to watch. (No, not porn. Get your mind out of the gutter.) I ended up searching for a World War II training film I had caught part of during a TCM Memorial Day Marathon. (I did find it, it’s called Resisting Enemy Interrogation. It’s got a cool story as German Interrogators try by hook and by crook get information from 5 down airmen.)

However, while looking for that video I found several others that were very interesting. One on flak (anti-aircraft fire) how it works and how to evade it, and a Sad Sack cartoon on the importance of maintaining you weapon properly. The most informative video I found though was one on the basics of small arms and how they work. I have friends who collect guns, and I remember shooting rifles as a boy with my father, however nothing has every made the mechanics of modern firearms as easy to understand as this WWII training film. I present it here for your education or enjoyment. (It is about 40 minutes long.)

 

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