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32 days ago
I caught part of an interview on TV some while back with three archeologists. I can’t recall the name of the show and I’m not even sure of the channel. I think it might have been TVOntario. Anyways, one thing that does stick in my mind was the last question asked which went something like, “What is the one thing you wouldn’t want to find on a dig site.” Each of the archeologists answered differently. 1) An Archeological Anomaly. Although the archeologist said “pyramid,” (in Canada). This would be a problem since it would mean having to rethink many theories about the site and possibly the entire history of a region or a country. And it also threatens the credentials of many doctorials and masters. The last thing a professor at a university wants is to have their doctoral thesis destroyed since it could mean not only loosing their credentials but their credibility as well as their job. 2) Gold. Finding gold on a dig site would seem to be desirable, although it only draws in looters ...
45 days ago
While nobody would say that TV is dead by any means, the recent US shutdown of analogue TV can be seen as the passing of an era. TV as people knew it in the 1950s is practically gone. People don’t watch television anymore, they watch video. And that’s even more true of the newer generations. In the 50s, 60s, and 70s, people would sit in front of the TV, often as a family, and watch it when their favorite shows came on. Then in the 1980s the VCR became a feature in most people’s homes. (While the home VCR came out in the 60s, it wasn’t mainstay until at least the late 70s.) Suddenly people started to watch not just live TV but recorded TV. But nowadays a person can watch a TV show not just from a live broadcast but from a DVR (including TiVo), a VCR (there are many still in use), a DVD, streaming across the Internet or as an Internet download (in many different formats). And even so-called live TV can be watched delayed on a PVR so that the ads can be passed over or the show can be ...
56 days ago
It almost seems as if the new fall television season hasn't started. There's just so little new material to interest me, and even many of the existing shows I've been watching don't seem to appeal to me. I tried to watch Flash Forward but lost interest after the first five minutes. I did watch the pilot of Eastwick but doubt I'll watch any more episodes; there's just too much male-bashing going on. There's still one or two shows I've yet to see, but the following is based upon what I expect to be my current fall viewing schedule. I'm leaving out Jay Leno only because I'm likely to watch it off and on, catching it when it's convient as I did when he was on the Tonight Show. I watched the current Tonight Show over the summer but I'm more likely to watch instead. Pretty much all the shows I watch are recorded first. Monday 8pm Heroes 9pm Trauma I can't say if I'll stick with Heroes. I watched the pilot and it wasn't that bad. And considering there's no competition at that ...
73 days ago
I got a new computer system recently which mean a whole lot of new setup. And one of the biggest problems one can have is with TV tuner cards. My first TV tuner card was an ATI All-In-Wonder which I got with my old computer The TV tuner card I originally got with the computer was giving me a lot of trouble. Mainly it wouldn’t synchronize properly with the video and it wasn’t picking up ATSC at all. So I returned it and got a Hauppauge WinTV 1250. The 1250 worked well, although I had trouble with the video going dark. It turned out to be an XP compatibility issue with the drivers that came with the card. Since I was using composite input through the S-Video it wasn’t reading the signal properly. I found the latest copy of WinTV7, version 1.2, and after installing that it worked fine. No more underbright screens. I found the link for WinTV7 v1.2 in a forum post which I ran across while searching for the problem. The main page still gives the outdated software. ...
84 days ago
I've been meaning to get more postings done but I've been too busy with other things lately. A few things I wanted to cover: I've switched my main page to http://writerpatrick.webs.com now because Geocities is shutting down. I'm not going to bother recreating the other Geocities pages I had, however most of the videos I had up can now be found on YouTube under Writerpatrick. I'm also not bothering to recreate the list of Saturday Morning TV show previews because someone has already created a Wikipedia entry for it (some time after I had created mine, although Wikipedia didn't exist when I created mine). I may try to do one for Prime Time Previews, or at least re-post that, although I've not had the time to update it lately and there just doesn't seem to be much interest in it. I am going to try to repost the pumpkin pictures, although most should be available throughout this blog. The images shown on the blog are only a partial list, but I might update them with the rest. If you ...
