JcSparks.com

This is just a heads-up for those of you who are interested in cooking or food in general. I’ve been collecting recipes that we particularly like for some time, mostly for my own benefit and future reference. Recently, though, I’ve starting adding photos and narrative to the recipes, and posting more frequently, and lo and behold, I seem to be writing a food blog.

So come check out The Persnickety Palate from time to time to see what we’ve been eating and why (also when, how, and whence). We’ve also added a link to it from here, in the Links box at the right. A taste for you: Last night we had wild sockeye salmon, broiled and served with a roasted red pepper sauce and sauteed snow peas, and homemade cheesecake ice cream for dessert.

They’re still up and down, but we are starting to see Freyja’s ears perking up together sometimes now. After seeing her all floppy for weeks, the upright ears almost make her look surprised, or airborne or something.

Chewing on a bird seed container that she loved to death in the space of a few hours. And look at that dark body!

I don’t think people will have trouble guessing her breed much anymore!

A few new pictures of our beautiful growing girl. Her right ear is really trying to stand up, but we haven’t been able to capture it in photos yet. No wonder it’s taking a while; her ears are as big as sails. Her topcoat continues to develop, and we’re starting to get a better idea of what she’s going to look like. I especially like the “spectacles” she’s got going around her eyes.

Well, our little puppy is 12 weeks old now. She went to the vet yesterday for another vaccination, and weighs 24 lbs now, double what she weighed when we first brought her home. Her top coat is starting to come in, so before too much longer, we’ll know what her coloring will be like as an adult. So far, most of the guard hairs are concentrated along her spine (I think you can see them pretty well in the picture at the bottom of the post), but we’re guessing she’ll look a lot like her mother, Briya. Speaking of which, Happy Mother’s Day, to all the mothers out there!

Freyja’s ears are still working on standing up. So far her left ear is doing pretty well, but as you can see, some days they’re down and some days they’re up. The photo above was taken last week; the one below was taken this morning.

Freyja is doing a great job with training. As long as she isn’t overexcited, she does a very good job sitting and staying, and sometimes even heeling. At the very least, she has learned that she needs to sit and stay before she gets fed. She is also doing a very good job learning no, off, drop it and leave it. That hasn’t stopped her from chewing on us sometimes, but we’re hopeful that the end is in sight.

The above picture is partially just to show how much bigger she is than when we first brought her home.

We may have discovered one of Freyja’s aptitudes in the past week or two. We found a little park in our neighborhood, with a field and some play equipment and the like. Jeremy has started taking her there during their early morning walks, and got her to climb up on some of the playground equipment when no children were around, just for the experience of going up stairs and over and under things. Now she really seems to look forward to playing on the equipment, and has even taken to the slides.

Jeremy had to go in front at first, but now she hardly needs encouragement, and runs right around to the stairs to go back up for another trip. We’re starting to think that agility training might be a really fun job for our Freyja to do, so we’re going to look into local agility clubs when she gets a bit older.

Now that I own an HD DVD player, I’ve started reading more of the forums about the two formats. This page on Wikipedia gives a full overview of the differences between the two formats.

Everyone is quick to point out that Blu Ray has a higher capacity and supports higher bitrates in the audio tracks—which is true. However, since they both use the same codecs for video compression, that means that we’re actually just talking about having 8.5 hours on a Blu Ray disc versus 5.1 hours on an HD disc. So really, that extra space is only going to be useful for TV series and the like where you’d end up being able to put the entire series on, say, three discs instead of four.

You’ll also note that both formats support lossless audio formats. When there are lossless options, who cares what the bitrates are for the lossy formats? What we really need is hardware to decode the lossless formats. This is required of all HD DVD players, but optional (and therefore not implemented) on any Blu Ray player.

Those are the major bones that get picked at, but for me there are two other issues that are just as important. First, while both standards implement the AACS copy protection, the Blu Ray standard adds another layer called BD+. Fox has recently pulled almost all of their scheduled Blu Ray releases, and it is widely speculated that they are waiting for BD+ protection to be added to before they begin releasing titles again.

If you read about BD+, you’ll see that the current version of the standard (1.1) hasn’t yet been implemented in any of the existing players. Moreover, version 2.0 of the standard will require an internet connection, suggesting that they will need to authorize media each and every time you want to play it. That’s right: some multi-national organization is going to know what you play, when you play it, and decide if you are trustworthy enough to be allowed to play it. Sounds an awful lot like the draconian failed DVD competitor Divx to me…

The other line that is frequently overlooked is the Region Coding. If you are familiar with internationally released DVDs, you know that there were several different region codes and that players were not supposed to play movies from a different region than the player was coded for. Region coding aside, there were technical problems with playing foreign movies domestically due to differing video standards (NTSC and PAL) and languages.

HD source material does not have to deal with differing video standards, so there is no technical reason for region codes any longer. Blu Ray still maintains region codes; HD DVD has done away with them. That means that I can (and did) order the British version of Harry Potter 4 from Amazon UK and watch it without any problems in my home.

I know I’ve been picking at the details here, and the truth is that both formats are going to look amazing on a true High Definition television. That said, I think that if you look beneath the surface, it’s clear that HD DVD is a much more consumer-friendly format, and that Sony has a bit of a Trojan horse here. Within those cavernous Blu Ray discs hides a phalanx of restrictions, limitations and gotchas that only a multi-national corporation could love.

Back before I became a starving student artist, I was something of a videophile. Julie and I have a large collection of DVDs and a full surround-sound set-up. Now that I am no longer a starving student artist and have a full-time job again, the siren call of the Home Theater has been beckoning to me.

Last month, we decided to use a bit of our tax-refund toward the purchase of a new HD TV. After careful consideration, I decided that the Sony Liquid Crystal On Silicon (LCOS) rear projection was the way to go. As I understand it, LCOS is sort of the best blend of Digital Light Projection (DLP) and LCD. Being a Micro-mirror device, it doesn’t have the problems with backlighting washing out the blacks the way LCDs often do. Also, being a three-chip design, it doesn’t employ a color wheel which can cause the rainbow-effects on some DLP sets. Moreover, as I understand it, almost all of the current generation of DLP sets use a technique called ‘wobbulation’ to acheive the resolution of 1080p. What that means is that they don’t really have the full two million pixels necessary for true 1080p display but will accept at 1080p signal, blending some of the pixels together to make up the display.

The Sony LCOS sets do have the full two million pixels need to display a full 1080p signal. Sony brands their LCOS TVs with the SXRD designation. We got the smallest set SXRD set that Sony sells, though that is still a hefty 50 inches, and I have to admit it looks huge in our home theater room.

Now that we have a tele with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 (higher than most computer monitors) it has become painfully clear how abysmal the source material we’ve been watching is. The only solution is to get HD source material—either by upgrading our Satellite connection to include the HD package, or upgrading our DVD to one of the next-gen HD formats (or both).

Since it is the end of the network broadcast season, I think we’re going to wait though the summer before upgrading the satellite. We really don’t watch much television during the summer anyway. That leaves an upgrade to the DVD system as the best method to get HD source material.

Unfortunately, as you may know, there is currently a format war on with the next gen movie formats. In one corner is the HD-DVD standard, which was supposed to be the standard. Then there is the Sony contender, Blu-Ray. Buying during a format war seems like a bad idea. That said, it also seems as though this war is not going to be won by either side in the foreseeable future. Blu-Ray has a slightly higher capacity, but also has more layers of Digital Rights Management (i.e. what big companies use to ensure that you can only use the media you purchase from them in the approved manner they proscribe).

Other than that, they are pretty identical in terms of capablities. The big difference right now is which studios are backing which formats. Many are releasing movies on both formats, though obviously Sony (Columbia Tri-Star and MGM) is only releasing Blu-Ray movies. Likewise with Fox and Disney at this point. Universal, however, is only releasing on HD-DVD, and though Warner is starting to release Blu-Ray, most of their available material is HD-DVD for now.

So no clear winner in that regard. I guess what it come down to, then, is who do you want to control the standard? I really like Sony hardware—as I said, I purchased one of their television sets. However, their media arm strikes me as Fascist.

I know that sounds harsh, but I think the title is one that they have earned by the way they treat their customers. Recently Sony has modified their standard DVDs to have bad data on them. These bad sectors are intended to make it more difficult for people to copy the DVDs they purchase from Sony. End result: Many people were unable to watch the movies that they paid for because the players had trouble with the discs, and it didn’t stop anyone who really wanted to copy movies from doing so.

Even worse, Sony previously added software to their audio CDs that will install itself on your computer with or without your permission. It was designed to make it impossible to copy the music from your legally purchased CD onto your computer for use with portable music players like the iPod. The so-called “Sony Root-kit” also had the side effect of making the computers vulnerable to third party hackers. Removing the software often corrupted the hard drive of the computer it was on. And all because they didn’t want you do be able to listen to the music you had purchased, on your computer. Had this software been release by a 18 year old kid instead of a multi-national corporation, they would have locked him up and thrown away the key.

For reasons like these, Sony’s media arm has earned my sincere distrust. I do not want them to control the next-generation movie standard. And I think any sane person would agree that they can’t be trusted to own the standard, as they routinely create discs that don’t conform to the existing standards.

With that in mind, I have purchased an HD-DVD player. Hopefully Fox and Disney will come around and start releasing their movies in the HD-DVD standard. I’d be only too hapy to trade them some of my money for a movie that would play in my shiny new HD-DVD player. Stand-alone HD-DVD players are currently outselling Blu-Ray players, so hopefully it is only a matter of time. That said, I really don’t think this is a war that is going to end any time soon. Especially since there are plans to make discs that contain both formats, as well as players (LG just released one) that will play both formats.

For me, I’m voting with my dollars for the standard I think will best serve the consumers—HD-DVD.

– Jeremy