When I was a youngin’, I used to eat up all the BBC programming I could get on domestic cable and PBS. Nothing makes a wee lad feel mentally superior than fostering a deep appreciation of British sensibilities. This did not stop me from being bullied, but it did result in my continued love of Python and Doctor Who (I was a member of the Doctor Who Fan Club of America).

There were two other shows that have stuck with me over the years, shows that I hope beyond hope will one day find a new life and will not simply be redone with the abashedly over the top approaches of American hosts. Those shows are Connections and The Secret Life of Machines.

Connections was a fairly successful series in which James Burke, your humble host, “connects” two events, one historical and one modern, to show the progression of chance encounters, dependencies, and advances required to get from point A to point B for something like the invention of the telephone. I quoted “connects” because the connections were often tenuous at best. Still, it was fascinating information and gave me a real appreciation for chance and improbability (that I was also reading Douglas Adams at the time probably [hee hee] contributed to my interest in improbability). I still buy every Connections-style book that Burke writes, even though they are getting less and less convincing with each new release. I also bought the Connections PC game when it was released. I love that junk.

The second show was The Secret Life of Machines. As a kid, I would often grab the nearest screwdriver and proceed to disassemble the stuff around me to see what was inside. Even though I hadn’t the slightest clue how something might work, I needed to know what was tucked inside toys, electronics, computers, et cetera. The Secret Life of Machines was like crack for me as the show would focus on one machine for an entire episode and give its history, how it worked, and how its parts interacted. I particularly remember the episodes about vacuum cleaners and refrigerators for some reason. As with Connections, the presentation of TSLoM was very dry and very informative. The pre-SquiggleVision animation certainly didn’t hurt it at all as it reminded me of the opening of Mystery, a sequence I both loved and feared (it scared the crap out of me when I was 8 watching it in the dark on a black and white TV while no one else was awake). My memories of TSLoM were later awakened when watching the animated sequences on Junkyard Wars which used nearly the same exact art/animation style when describing the requirements of the various challenges.

For quite some time now, Connections has been available on DVD but only in sets of entire series and often at the price of $150 per series. While I love the show, I’ve never found the motivation required to drop upwards of $450 to own all of it. Similarly for TSLoM, the DVD set is $200 for the series. That’s a lot of cash for learning how the Hoover company got its start.

There must be something that has prompted this outpouring of dead TV series love, right? Of course there is. A thread over at ShackNews was discussing the merits of MythBusters vs. Smash Lab. That got me thinking about the shows I do enjoy on Discovery, namely “How It’s Made” and “Some Assembly Required“. This kicked off my nostalgia for TSLoM, which prompted a web search to dive into more retro love. There I discovered that all the episodes of TSLoM are available for download/streaming! I just about crapped my pants in excitement!

You can bet I’ll be spending this evening putting these on my media server. Now if somebody would just release Connections to the public…

I’ve been digging through my book collection looking for tomes with which I can part for the good of a breast cancer fund raiser.  Goodbye Anne Rice collection.  I am not emo enough for you anymore.

In one box of largely technical books (CSS, HTML, Java, C++, Photoshop, HTTP), I spied my Quake 3 Arena Linux collectible tin box.  It occurred to me today that, at one point, I was all excited about the future of playing games on Linux.  I was even a Transgaming subscriber for a while.  But, of course, Linux gaming never really took off - Tux Racer was cute, but come on.

Why is this notable?  Only because of this thought: I once wanted a Linux box that ran games, but I now have a game box that runs Linux.

This is not to say that I’m actually going to install Linux on my PS3.  With as much as I’ve been using the Remote Play feature and its WOL capability, I’m afraid that the bootloader would require input to select the PS3 GameOS and not allow me to control it remotely with my PSP.  But I sure would like to be able to use Firefox instead of the PS3 browser.

It’s a real shame, too, since combining Yellow Dog Linux with StreamMyGame would allow me to play PC games from my PS3.  With StreamMyGame, the game executes on one PC and is streamed to another device - including a Linuxfied PS3.   I find it hard to believe this would be any good for a first person shooter, but if this gets me playing Battle for Middle-Earth on my projector, I’m all for it.

Aw hell, what do I have to lose really?  I can always reset the PS3 and reformat should I need to wipe out the Linux install.  Weekend project HO!

On the way home from … somewhere… I asked Brandy if she new anything about the history of the emperor Constantine and whether or not he was somehow involved in any conquest of Turkey. You see, I was spontaneously struck by the question, “Why was Constantinople renamed Istanbul?” and, lacking access to anything ending “-ipedia” or “-oogle” in the car, I made my inquiries to my third knowledge engine of choice: my wife.

She didn’t know, so I was stuck with this mini-mystery but only long enough to finish the drive home. I forgot about it after that. That is, until the song came up via shuffle on my Zune today.

And now, the answer!

Byzantium is the first known name of the city. When Roman emperor Constantine I (Constantine the Great) made the city the new eastern capital of the Roman Empire on May 11, 330, he conferred on it the name Nova Roma (”New Rome”). Constantinople (”City of Constantine”) was the name by which the city became instead more widely known. It is first attested in official use under emperor Theodosius II (408-450).^[3] It remained the principal official name of the city throughout the Byzantine period, and the most common name used for it in the West until the early 20th century.

So now I have to wonder why nobody made a song called “Constantinople (not Byzantium)”.

With any console purchase in my life comes the strong desire to buy a shit-ton of games so I can have some variety on my new toy.  So far, I have been able to hold off on just going nuts with game purchases for the PS3.  This is largely because I don’t feel that many of the games are absolute home run titles.

Uncharted, my first purchase, has proven to be a great game.  Very enjoyable.  But there are other titles that call to me, like Heavenly Sword, Burnout Paradise, Resistance: Fall of Man, and Lair.  All of them are very mixed in their reviews and none seems a sure bet.  Heavenly Sword is “too short”.  Burnout Paradise is “too open”.  Resistance is “too much of the same”.  Lair is “too hard to control”.  So what’s a gamer to do?

Today, I finally did it - I subscribed to GameFly.  I had held off all this time because I’m a bit of an ownership junkie, but I now have five current gen consoles/handhelds.  There’s no way I can keep up with game purchases for all of them.  Even when I’m being picky.  For the price of purchasing roughly six games, I’ll now have access to Netflix style rentals for an entire year.

Sure, I could have just rented from Blockbuster, but at $8 a game for less than a week?  No thanks.  Plus, their selection and availability are often lacking.  And, they’re Blockbuster (note: my disdain is hypocritical - I have a Blockbuster membership).

Huh, this whole entry sounds like an advertisement.  Linking to GF using my referral link probably doesn’t help the shill factor any.

Chances are good that once the weather improves, I’ll be trading off my current bumper crop of gaming time for time out on the bike with Gare, but until then, I’ll be in my basement should anyone need me.

I just discovered the Zune Card thing that’s offered to those of us who decided against iPods.  I guess they didn’t learn anything from the 360 gamer cards which caught on because they were easily embedded.

But if you click now, you’ll see the last song I listened to was by ABBA.

I once again find myself in a position in which I have a sum of money at my disposal and no immediate need to apply it to something practical. It is therefore time to enter my annual post in which I contemplate which unnecessary purchase most appeals to me! Weeee!

Here are the possibilities:

1. A new kayak - this is probably a poor choice since I’m not entirely sure I spent any time in my kayak last year. My rationalization is that if I had a new, more capable boat, I’d spend more time in it. This, however, conflicts with the desire to get…
2. A new bike - No, there’s nothing wrong with my trike. Nothing at all. But I would very much like to also have a recumbent of the two wheeled variety, preferably one that folds so I can transport it even when I have to take Gareth and his wheelchair to school. Though, my transport issues could be solved simply by purchasing outdoor storage for my trike since the reason I don’t take it with me regardless is that I have to store it in my basement which has only an indoor entrance.
3. A bike rack expansion - The company that makes my current bike rack has recently started selling an accessory for it that allows one to hang a trike off the back of the rack, which would mean no more bug splatter all over the front of my trike from being on the roof. It would also mean no more lifting the trike to the roof of my element and having to secure it from both sides of the vehicle.
4. A PS3 - Now that Blu-Ray is the de facto winner of the HD media war (for now), I feel as though I can justify a PS3 purchase. But the games, oh the games. Are they really there just yet? Does that even matter? If my goal is to have a Blu-Ray player, then no, the games don’t matter. I like to think, however, that I would one day like to play games on a game console.
5. A new camera - While I’m not a fan of carrying around a bag of lenses (been there, done that), I am a fan of higher image fidelity, RAW mode, larger image sensors, and hot shoes. My DSC-H2 has done well by me, but I’m tired of filtering out purple fringe or of being limited to 16×24 prints.
6. A new PC - This is the least likely option as I’ve simply abandoned PC gaming. Perhaps I’d get back into it were I to have a capable machine, but Brandy and I are trying to set ourselves up to spend more time with each other while one of us is computing, not less. A gaming PC wouldn’t aid that in any way. A gaming laptop might help, but I hold gaming laptops in low regard (high price, low shelf life) and will actively avoid such a solution.

So yeah, it’s a rough life, I know. No matter what, I’m going to be doing about a month of research before I can make a decision. Bikes and cameras in particular are not purchases to be entered into lightly (at least, not if you’re really picky).

UPDATE: Two days after writing this, I picked up a PS3 and a widescreen monitor.  So much for patience.  Still, though, I’ve got enough left over for a camera upgrade and am looking forward to judging the performance of the Olympus 570UZ when it comes out.   I’m just not ready yet to go back to carrying a bag of lenses around with me.

There’s an auto parts store along my commute to work. I was awfully tickled when I drove by and saw their roadside sign expressing the following:

SAVE GAS
BE INERT

That seemed excessively clever for an auto parts store and had me chuckling to myself for the rest of the drive. It stuck with me enough that I told Brandy all about it, expressing the novelty of somebody at an auto parts store referring to the properties of gases in their sign.

But then, driving by this morning, I took another look at the sign and saw:

SAVE GAS
AIR INSERT

Well, that’s quite a bit less clever and refers to products designed to increase fuel economy.

For whatever reason, my initial glance the day before turned “AIR INSERT” into “BE INERT” in order to find a clever joke where there was none to be found. This might be along the same lines as my wife stating that we should get “4 to 6 inches” in reference to the recent snowfall while my mind immediately latched onto it as a proposition for sexual intercourse.

It was not. I was to remain inert that night.

Yesterday, the Carida Garrison of the 501st gathered at the Franklin Institute to kick off the Star Wars exhibit that’s running there for the next couple of months.

I’d say more about that except that I’m insanely jealous and can barely contain my geek envy.