JcSparks.com

Nolan Michael Sparks

Born 17 minutes past midnight in the early morning on March 22nd.
Weight: 7 pounds 2.3 oz
Length: 20 inches

Mom and baby are resting comfortable in the hospital and both are doing great.

If you look past the issues, there are a few solid heuristics for reaching the White House which have held since WWII.

The American South tends to vote as a block and vote Republican. This is devastating to any Democratic candidate, so to counteract this effect, a successful Democratic candidate needs to be from the South.

For Republicans, the biggest challenge is carrying one of the big three states. If they can do that, then success is much more likely (see Reagan ‘80), especially if the Democratic candidate is not from the South (see Reagan ‘84). New York is so firmly Democratic that it’s not even worth trying to take that state. So the best bet for the Republican party is to put forth the governor from either Texas or California.

Other interesting trends: It is difficult to be elected to the White House from the Senate, and even more so from the Vice Presidency. Moving from the Governor’s Mansion to the White House is more likely. Speculation on this is that nobody really remembers what governors do, but the Senate votes frequently and publicly on important matters.

Republican candidates are more likely to be elected during American involvement in a war, and it is almost unthinkable for them not to be re-elected if they are up for election during an American war.

The only real exception to these heuristics was JFK—and he didn’t win the popular vote, he won the electoral vote. Plus, there is some evidence that the Mob helped him to take Chicago and therefore Illinois, which was enough just enough to best Nixon.

This election would be remarkable even if there wasn’t a female or a minority front-runner. None of the front-runners from either camp fit with the established patterns for success. Obama and Clinton are both senators and neither is from the South. Arnold isn’t eligible to run and Rick Perry seems content to remain at the helm in Texas.
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So, Julie and I were in a pretty bad accident this past Sunday: a six-car pile-up on I-205, a little ways south of the Portland Airport. Fortunately, everyone involved seemed to be alright. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for our brand-new Prius.

Basically, it was a rainy day and a little Toyota pickup struck a GMC Envoy in the right-hand lane, which caused the pickup to spin out of its lane and into the center lane perpendicular to the flow of traffic in front of us. I slammed on the brakes and the Prius came to an abrupt stop. Actually, I was quite impressed with the way the Prius handled, especially considering the slick conditions. The anti-lock brakes and vehicle stability control no doubt helped. I was able to maintain control of the Prius and keep it in the center lane while coming to an emergency stop. Unfortunately, the Rav4 SUV behind us wasn’t able to respond as quickly.

No sooner had we come to a complete stop than the Rav4 plowed into the back of our Prius and pushed us into the Toyota pickup. I’m not entirely sure what happened after that, but there were two other vehicles involved in the accident after that point.

We are thankful that everyone involved in the crash was able to walk away from it, especially considering the road conditions on the freeway. Julie and I have been sore and achy since the crash, though not as much as we had expected to be. We took a trip to our physician just to be safe, and there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong that rest, anti-inflammatories and heating-pads won’t cure.

This past week has been spent getting a “crash-course” (sorry, bad pun) on how to work with the insurance industry. The claims adjuster just looked at our car and it seems that the repairs will be at least $10,000. There are always additional damages that aren’t apparent on the surface, so the end total could be upwards of $15,000, still shy of the 80% cost needed to total the car. The body shop is saying that it’s 19 business days of labor to repair the vehicle… so it’s going to be a good month before we get our car back.

Not to turn this into a Prius ad, but I would like to say how impressed Julie and I were with the Prius, not only with the job it did keeping us out of the accident that happened in front of us, but also with how well it protected us during the rear-end collision. The Rav4 was obviously totaled: frame damage, leaking fluid, in addition to the body damage. You’d figure, in an elastic collision like an automobile accident, that the damage would be pretty evenly split between the two vehicles. However, the Prius did an outstanding job of absorbing the energy of the impact and keeping Julie and me safe.

Apparently we had a 3.6 magnitude earthquake last night near Salem. It happened around 11:20pm, and we were in bed, but not yet asleep. We didn’t feel a thing, but we did hear one of the bedroom windows rattling and thought it might be the wind. Jeremy got up and closed the window, and that was that. I think this is the second or third earthquake in Salem since I started school at Willamette, but it’s the first time I noticed anything at all during the quake…not that we realized what had happened.

This is what we’ve been doing instead of updating the blog lately….

Freyja’s entrance on the scene was the death knell for our carpets, which were already the worse for wear thanks to the machinations of 5 ferrets over the course of 6 years. Actually, the ferret smells in the carpet were giving Freyja some difficulty with housebreaking, and we finally had enough of scrubbing at puppy piddle marks. We decided to install laminate flooring in the front rooms of the house, so Jeremy pulled up the carpet in the corner to see what condition the subfloor was in. Turns out it was actually a pretty nice hardwood floor, in need of refinishing.

The discovery was an exciting one, and Jeremy could hardly wait to start ripping out carpet. It and its tacking strips came out without too many problems, though Freyja was not exactly pleased by this development. She lay down wherever there was a bit of carpet left, looking on forlornly.

Jeremy did all the work of the refinishing himself. I wanted to help, but about all I could manage was helping move furniture and dogsitting. We rented a random orbital sander to use for the main stripping/sanding work, which took Jeremy all of a Saturday to complete (and many boxes of sandpaper). The floors, under their previous coats of varnish, turned out to be (we believe) Douglas fir, which isn’t exactly the hardest hardwood flooring, but was very commonly used in this area because of proximity.

Then Jeremy cleaned the floors and applied coats of clear poly to seal the floor, right at the end of the day so they could dry overnight and allow us to leave our bedroom in the morning. He did that twice, a few days apart, with some scuffing of the first coat to adhere the second better. Then we let the poly cure for a week before replacing some of the furniture, protecting the floor with felt furniture pads underneath everything.

The verdict? The floors are so much better than the carpets, even though they already have some doggie scratch marks on them. The house smells better, and is cleaner because now we can really see every drift of dog hair gathering in the corners; plus, it reduces some of our flea problems, which I am loving. We purchased a gorgeous hand-tufted wool area rug for the home theater room, and are currently reimagining the arrangement of the front room, which is a rather awkward space. When we can afford it, we’ll get some more rugs so that Freyja isn’t sliding all over the place.

Actually, the sliding is a little funny, and she has adapted the way she runs in the house to suit it, slowing down well before she approaches a wall, or aiming to end up on a carpet where she can get some traction. She loves the fact that the front room is so big and empty right now—perfect for puppy play. Plus, the floors are cooler in the summertime for hot dogs.

So now that we’ve had the Prius for a few days we’re starting to get a feel for it. Here’s a few thoughts…

We’ve rented many different vehicles over the past year and none have we enjoyed driving nearly as much as the VW Jetta we previously owned. There really is something to that German notion of fahrfignugen.

The Prius is different. It doesn’t respond or corner like the Jetta did, but that isn’t why one buys a Prius. In fact, I’d have to say that the Prius has really changed the way that I drive. Not that it won’t drive the way any other car would: it has a full internal combustion engine, so you can drive it just like any other gas-powered automobile. (Although it does use a more efficient Atkinson Cycle engine instead of the more ubiquitous Four-Stroke engine.) But the Prius gives you more information and presents it in a very visual, easy to understand manner.

Here’s a look at the most common screen on the Prius multi-function display…

These aren’t the most typical results, but are real numbers earned during a return trip from Silver Creek Falls. You can see that there was a fifteen minute period where we averaged 100 miles per gallon (even with the A/C blasting). Since we’ve taken possession of the car we’ve put 177 miles on the car including a round trip to Portland as well as a round trip to Silver Creek Falls. Lifetime we’ve averaged slightly more than 48 miles per gallon. That works out to just over three and a half gallons (about a quarter tank) of gas or about eleven dollars of gas.

Having that sort of instant information about current consumption really makes you want to drive in a more fuel-efficient (and no doubt safer) manner. You really start to notice where the road, that looks completely level, actually has a slight gradient… It’s almost like playing a video game where your high-score is a number based on your lifetime miles per gallon.

So, while the Prius may not make you yearn for those curvy mountain roads you only see in car commercials, it does make it fun to drive up I-5; which may be about the straightest bit of road in the country.

- Jeremy

So now that we’ve got a puppy who requires regular veterinary visits (and trips to the dog park), it has become necessary for us to find a regular means of transportation. Until now we’ve been making do with the occasional rental and ordering whatever we needed from the ‘net.

No more—three years without a car was enough.

For several months I examined the options: we would be remiss not to at least consider a hybrid model, and of those the best option at present is clearly the Toyota Prius. We’re probably the only family to purchase a hybrid vehicle and increase their net carbon emissions, but there it is.

After putting our name on a list and waiting three weeks, our very own Prius is finally in….

You can see that Freyja has already decided she likes the car. Fortunately, she hasn’t deemed it necessary to mark it as her own (at least yet), though the back windows are covered with doggie noseprints. We’ve ordered waterproof nylon seat covers in anticipation of regular excursions with the dog.

More to come, I’m sure…

- Jeremy

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

Meet the newest member of the Sparks family: 7-week old Freyja Vom Holtzberg, a purebred German Shepherd Dog with a red sable coat. We picked her up this morning from Holtzberg K9 near Eugene. Many more pics to follow in the coming days…