danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

Fifty years ago, if you had asked any American kid what the future would look like, he probably would have told you we’d have flying cars, robot butlers, jet packs, and so on.  He wouldn’t have predicted we’d all be fatter than ever, sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, driving cars that look much less cool than the ones he could see cruising on his shiny new, wide-open Interstate.  None of that boy’s predictions may have come to pass, but I experienced the future last night, and it was amazing.

We went to Best Buy last Saturday and bought a Blu-ray disc player.  I had seen one at a friend’s house last year, and the picture was incredible.  But I expected it to be.  Since the introduction of the DVD player, video quality has been steadily improving.  HDTV, of course, has been the greatest leap forward.  But the Blu-ray player is much more than high-definition video.  It’s Netflix.

I must be the last of my friends to use Netflix, an online video store that sends DVDs to members through the mail, which they then watch and return.  That process is fairly low-tech, and never struck me as the most convenient way to watch movies, though I had to admire Netflix’s selection.

Recently, visiting friends, I have seen that Netflix now offers streaming video, which can be accessed via fancy game consoles or a Blu-ray player.  Harris and Kat, and Ryan and Karla showed us how they could select from a seemingly unlimited number of Netflix films to watch instantly on their TVs through internet streaming.  My prognosticating skills are apparently limited, because I never thought streaming video was the future.  That is, I thought slow internet connections and limited hard-drive space were significant obstacles.  Who, I wondered, would spend hours downloading a movie, which will take up a ton of space on his or her computer, and which he or she will have to watch on a tiny computer screen?  That’s not how it works, it turns out.

On Monday morning I hooked up our new Blu-ray player, moved around some wires so I could connect it to the cable modem, and then signed up for Netflix.  Last night we experienced the magic.  We went to the Netflix website, selected the exact movie Miriam wanted to see at that moment, added it to our “instant” cue.  Then, magically, that title appeared on our TV screen.  I pressed play, the Blu-ray player spent thirty seconds or less downloading the movie–or at least it began downloading the movie–then the film began.  The picture was widescreen, looked as good as a DVD, sounded as good, too, and played flawlessly without any skips or blips for the entire duration of the film.  I could barely believe it.  Miriam and I high-fived each other.

So, now there are countless movies and TV shows that we have ready to watch whenever we sit down in front of the television.  Plus, we can still get physical DVDs and Blu-ray discs in the mail.  I’m expecting Parsifal today.

We’re living in the future!  What does it cost?  Less than nine dollars a month.  Since we canceled the premium channels on our cable, were saving money.  Huzzah!

Filed under: Film, Friends, Musings, Technology on February 24th, 2010 | No Comments »

Though I love Olympic figure skating, ice dancing generally leaves me cold.  I keep waiting for jumps and throws, but they never come.  Furthermore, ice dancers seem to choose the worst music to skate to.  Not so Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir from Canada.  They won last night by skating to the Adagietto from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5.

Filed under: Current Events, Music, Sports on February 23rd, 2010 | No Comments »

Filed under: Music, Work on February 23rd, 2010 | Enter your password to view comments.

At school today, the professor showed us a video about so-called “killer bees” near Tucson.  A  man in the video described calling a bee keeper to his home to remove a hive on his porch.  The bee keeper’s tampering with the hive prompted the bees to swarm around him, sending him running to his vehicle and injuring him.  The homeowner’s wife arrived home, and she was chased away by the bees.  Then the bees killed a neighbor’s dog.

That is all very sad, but the video panned across the cover of a local newspaper describing the story, and the headline made me laugh out loud in the middle of the classroom:

Town Abuzz Over Bees

Swarm causes concern, puns

Filed under: School on February 22nd, 2010 | No Comments »

The men’s figure skating competition concluded last night, and, of course, I was pleased to see the American Evan Lysacek win gold.  I was nervous because the Russian skater, Yevgeny Plushenko, skated so well, and at the conclusion of the short program Tuesday night he was ahead of Lysacek.  Both Plushenko and Lysacek skated extremely well (I don’t think either fell down at all), and it really could have gone either way.  I actually like Plushenko, so I wouldn’t have been heartbroken had the result been reversed.

But it was fascinating to read an interactive feature in the New York Times today that explains the diminishing returns skaters receive by attempting quadruple jumps.  Plushenko had a quadruple jump in his program, Lysacek didn’t.  But Plushenko’s quad only increased his score by a point or less over these Olympics.  Recognizing that a failed quad jump would cost him up to three points, Lysacek avoided it, and concentrated on other moves that brought more points.

The data seem to show that quad jumps only get you a little if you succeed, but cost you a lot if you fail.

UPDATE: Lysacek was just on NBC talking to Bob Costas, and he seems like a class act.  Costas asked for his reaction to statements made by Plushenko about the quad jump.  Plushenko–understandably, in my opinion–believes that the quadruple jump has an important place in figure skating – that it is, in effect, the future of figure skating, and not doing it is looking backward.  Plushenko’s point is that the old scoring system made the quad more profitable.  Lysacek’s attitude is that the quad is just one element of many.  Still, both of these guys seem like nice guys who are serious about their sport, and either of them is worthy of the gold medal.

Filed under: Current Events, Sports on February 19th, 2010 | No Comments »