In the post-merger period, there has, indeed, been much griping going on about how the quality of the more exotic programming has gone downhill.  Playlists have gotten shorter, content is suddenly being censored, etc.

Well, not being a subscriber to either service (I’m not a big fan of using radio for music except under some specific cases . . . maybe I’ll talk about that later), I went to talk to a co-worker who is.  She tells me that she has been a subscriber to both radio networks for some time now, using a portable Sirius radio at her desk, and having an XM radio in her car.

I asked her if she has noticed any particular drop off in the quality of programming, and she said she had not.

I then asked the magic question:  What do you listen to?  She tells me her tastes in music centre around classic rock, and listed Journey as her number one favourite band.

So the way it appears to me is this:  The combined Sirius/XM no longer needs to compete for niche audiences, and so no niche audiences are served.  This leaves them free to compete with mainstream radio alone, where they can win for now by not playing advertisements.

My prediction is that you will hear them playing advertisements sometime soon, just as happened to cable TV.

A colleague of mine who had shared my sense about iPhones, but who has an even more insatiable curiosity than mine, has figured out the iPhone phenomenon.  It is about cheap access to the Internet.  Apparently, it can be more cost effective, and, in many cases, “good enough” access to the Internet than some other broadband options, plus you can make phone calls.

. . . and yeah, he bought one.

Well, my dear readers, it is getting closer to that point in time when the cutover to digital TV will be complete.  While I am certain that anyone reading this blog is already set, there will be those in our lives who, for one reason or another, may need assistance.

Personally, my solution to this has been the continued use of satellite TV.  I’ve been a very happy Dish Network customer for some years now, and I don’t expect that to change.  That said, though, I did apply for my DTV converter coupons and expect them to arrive in the next week or two.

. . . which brings me to my point.

My Dad bought his DTV converter yesterday, and asked me to come by and install it for him.  He, being mechanically inclined, but not electronically inclined, was a tad confused by some of the possibilities, so I stopped by his place right after work to do the installation.

He lives in Selkirk, NY, which is a moderate coverage area according to AntennaWeb. It’s zip code 12158 if you want to see for yourself.

He has been using a rabbit ears antenna for analogue TV, and the picture has been marginal at best. I hooked up the DTV converter using the line connectors, and, judging from his reaction, my reaction, and my stepmom’s reaction, I don’t think he is ever going to use the analogue tuner in his TV ever again.

Channels 6, 10, 13, 17 and 45 (actually broadcast on 39, 26, 12, 34 and 43, respectively) all come in flawlessly. Channel 23 (actually on 7) has an occasional freeze-up from a weak signal. All come in, with their respective subchannels, infinitely cleaner than their analogue counterparts

Then there is that whole topic of subchannels. With 6 broadcast stations, he is receiving a total of 15 channels not counting the analogue (which would bring the total to 21, close to what was expected). He is particularly happy about the addition of a 24-hour weather broadcast (he is a WeatherRadio junkie to begin with) and a retro-TV channel.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not as good as HDTV, but it is SDTV brought to its logical conclusion.  It is, however, well worth it, and better than analogue cable, if you are just looking to weather the DTV transition.

(Incidentally, I have heard some really bad things about the GE converters — don’t buy them. Get the Zenith, Echostar or Apex, from what I have heard. He bought the Zenith, and it looks like it is good. If the Echostar is as good as their satellite receivers, and the Apex as good as their DVD players, then they should both be excellent as well.)

There was a minor glitch caused by a voter going to the wrong machine.  This didn’t spoil the ballot, it just required some corrections to be made to the record so as not to mess up the audit trail.  There are two machines per district, and two sign-in books (A-K and L-Z), and each book goes to a specific machine.   At the end of the day, they compare the counter on the machine to the book.  As such, they have an exception that will need accounting for, but it should not be a problem.

We still use lever machines here in New York, and so there are no electronic glitches, no butterfly ballots, no hanging chads, no touch screen misalignments.  They work perfectly, as far as I know.  Besides that, by being familiar with the machines, and having downloaded and studied a sample ballot before hand, it only took me about a minute to vote, including checking three times that I had pulled the right levers.

I wish that today could be so uneventful for the rest of the nation; alas, I fear this will not be the case.

Ed Felten has put forth some ideas of what might go wrong.  I’m going to tell my boss that I could possibly be late tomorrow, depending on what the polling place looks like, but dammit, I’m voting, period.

Here in New York, we still use lever machines(and we are the only state to be doing so).  People seem to vest a lot of undue confidence in these machines, so let’s hope they are right to do so.

Anyway, go vote.  I will join Henry Rollins in telling you that I won’t tell you who to vote for, or who I am voting for (I’ll tell you later if you want to know), but go vote.

I want to find out if there is a name for the style of cinematography where the entire film takes the form of “raw” footage shot from a single camera operated by one of the characters in the film, who happens to be in the thick of the action.  If it lacks a name, I would like to suggest “cheap-ass cop-out suck.”

For those of you who read my review of Cloverfield, you will know that my wife and I went to see it, and hated it.

Unlike Cloverfield, the character who operated the camera in Quarantine is a professional TV cameraman, presumably using a one-piece HD camera of the type now in vogue.  He and a reporter for a Los Angles TV News Magazine show are spending a couple of days tailing the men of LA Fire Company 22.  The first half hour of the movie establishes this, with bits of B-roll, random clips of the firefighters between calls, some intro video and interviews with the firefighters.  It is mildly entertaining, but not what horror film fans came to see.  As all of the footage was shot by a “professional,” it is stable, steady, good-quality footage, save for the fact that it is somewhat dimmed to give it a “video” feel as required by the plot.

When the action starts, however, the camerawork goes totally to hell.  As with Cloverfield, it becomes such a frenetic, sensory-overload of a roller-coaster ride that you can’t actually follow the action.  The gore and effects may have been very good, but we couldn’t tell for sure.

When we went to see Cloverfield, I noticed that some parties got up and left before the film was over.  That happened with this film, also, except that this time, we were amongst them.  My recommendation: skip it.  Wait for a movie shot by professionals who understand that the camera should be an external, impartial observer.

Scrutinizing the bottle more closely through the throbbing pain, I found myself faced with a solid block of fine print.  I knew the information I wanted was in there somewhere, but where?

Eventually, I did find what I was looking for, but it got me to thinking.  What happens if you are having trouble thinking?  What happens if your English is poor?  God forbid, what happens if you can’t read?

In another industry, at the command of government, summary information has been required for some time now.  That industry is the credit industry.  To sign up for a credit card or take out a loan, you will receive, in addition to all of the fine-print terms and conditions, a secion in the documentation that clearly spells out the interest rate and other useful terms

So I thought, why shouldn’t this be done to over the counter medications?  A very simple label on a bottle of acetomenaphen would do a great deal of good.  It would have the numeral 1, a picture of a tablet, a slash, and “4-6h ” to indicate 1 tablet every four to six hours.  It would make life a lot easier.

Q.  Why do you buy or rent a DVD?

A.  To watch a movie.

Q.  Why do you buy or rent a Blu-Ray disc?

A.  To watch a movie in high definition.

This seems obvious, no?  In their release of Iron Man,  Paramount Studios seem to have missed this point.

Since DVDs first appeared, I have wished for a “JPTFMA” button on my remote.  The acronym stands for “Just Play the F***ing Movie, Already!”  Yes, your interactive menus look very nice, but if I can’t start the movie within twenty seconds of inserting the disc, then they are too long.  I am also not interested in being force-fed your previews, your anti-piracy message, your advertisements, or your disclaimers.  By all means, put this material on there, but give me a way to bypass it instantly.

The studios will, no doubt, be irritated to hear that I now watch DVDs using mplayer on my Linux-powered PC.  Thanks to it not being a licenced DVD player, it isn’t bound by the licence terms, and so I can bypass all of that crap.

Going a step farther, while it is not unheard of for someone to watch the extra features or listen to the commentary track, it is rare.  This stuff wastes space that could be better used to give us a better picture.  Never mind that, though, let’s assume that it’s reasonable for it to be there.   That brings us back to Paramount and Iron Man.

It seems that Iron Man came with an interactive quiz game that runs on the BD-Live platform.  Apparently, when you use this disc, it connects to the Internet and tries to acquire updates from Paramount before it will allow you to even watch the movie.  This, I will remind you, is for an application that few will use.

Making matters worse, apparently Paramount underestimated the amount of Internet traffic this would generate.  The Iron Man release drowned their servers in update requests, making them unresponsive.  The BD-Live application would just keep re-trying indefinitely until it got a response.  Apparently, some folks waited as much as 45 minutes before they were  able to watch the movie.

Again, why do people buy Blu-Ray discs?

To watch a movie.

Why couldn’t they?

Because of an application that few would use.

JPTFMA!

On a side-note the privacy advocates amongst us will also note that this also has the potential to generate a lot of data about who has bought this disc.  Of course, we all know that this will never be used for evil, right?  Right?  Yeah, right.

Two days ago, riding home from work, I saw someone I hadn’t seen in a while on the bus. She and her husband seem to dislike change just for the sake of disliking change. (Some may accuse me of this, also, but I try to have, and demonstrate, good reasons.)

The local transit authority whose buses we ride has, in the past couple of years, been buying and trying hybrid buses to replace the diesels that have dominated their fleet forever. Needless to say, she and her husband don’t like them.

Let me tell you why I like them, just from the point of view of a rider. First, they are more comfortable (though the diesels of the same vintage are, also), they have a nicer ride (thanks to an odd weight distribution) the lights don’t flicker (thanks to a big, and therefore more stable electrical system) and they are quieter (thanks to the engine idling at highway speed).

Anyway, her complaints are that they break down too much (though my experience has a particular diesel model breaking down much more frequently) and that they don’t save that much fuel.

“How much?” I asked.

“A gallon,” she answered.

“A gallon per what?”

“Per fill up.”

As my mind contorted its way through my review of that conversation, I decided to do the smart thing, and look it up.

CDTA repports that they have been carefully monitoring. They report an average of 5.0 MPG for the hybrids, and 3.4 MPG for the diesels. That would make these “fill ups” around 2-3 gallons. Not bloody likely as a hybrid will burn that much just going from Schenectady to Albany.

Always be wary of rumours. ‘Nuf sed.

Today, at the office, there was a repairman working on our pop machine.  He’s been working on it for several days.

The machine in question is very entertaining to watch.  Rather than dropping a bottle down a chute in traditional fashion, it has a robotic mechanism that will zip up to the appropriate level, turn a screw that will push one bottle into its “hand”, then bring it to the bottom, slide it all the way to the right, and drop the bottle in a short chute where it can be retrieved.  It doesn’t shake up the product or risk breaking a bottle if it’s glass.

I briefly discussed this with the repairman, though, in a conversation that started with “You’re still here?!?”  In the conversation, I mentioned remembering an old-style pop machine, where you would insert your change, open a tall, narrow refrigerator door, grab the bottle of your choice by the neck, and pull.  All the machine had to do was unlock the clamps around the bottles so you could pull one out.  An interlock kept you from pulling more than one bottle at a time (it would lock the other clamps as soon as one started to open).  A new bottle would roll into place as soon as you pulled one out.  It was wicked simple, and it worked like a charm.  It was over 20 years old when I first saw it, and it still worked perfectly.  It was over 30 years old when it was finally replaced because it couldn’t be configured for the higher price.

Entertainment value aside, what is the point of the complexity in this new-style machine?  Perhaps more to the point, what is its cost, not just in technology, but in lost sales because it is broken?