The Fun Zone: The Fun

We just watched an episode of Stargate Atlantis in which Bill Nye the Science Guy slaps Dave Foley from The Kids in the Hall in the face. Where else can you see that on television?

I'm going to miss that show...

So it's been a few months since we signed up with the U-Verse service, and I've had a little time to evaluate the features (as well as time for us to get over our TiVo abandonment issues). In general, I'm very pleased.

The Good

DVR - AT&T recently performed an upgrade to the system, called their Total Home DVR, that allows Stef to watch shows in her stamp room that were recorded on the DVR in the living room. That's pretty cool. Also added were several TiVo-like functions that I appreciate, like a folder menu structure and an automatic backup when you hit play while fast forwarding. It's still not absolutely perfect, but it certainly seems like they're trying to improve. The four shows at once ability has also come in handy on more than one occasion, especially on Thursdays at 8pm, when it records My Name is Earl, Survivor, Smallville, and Hole in the Wall simultaneously.

Online Functions - I can check voicemail online, as well as schedule and organize DVR recordings. I can also see who called me (a function also available through the set-top TV box), for when the battery in the Caller ID box dies (which it does often). When connected (see below), data transfer seems faster than our old DSL connection.

The Not-So-Good

Picture Freeze - We upgraded to HD shortly after getting the service, and most of the time the picture is quite lovely. Occasionally, though, the picture will glitch out for a moment. It's not a big deal, but it's a little distracting when you're in the middle of watching something.

Wi-Fi Connection - As I mentioned when we installed the service, the way the tech connected my two desktop office computers to the network was by using a couple of WiFi antennas to connect them wirelessly. This makes a certain amount of sense, as running two hard wires from the living room to the studio would have been a big hassle, and might have required all sorts of drilling and crawling around. Plus, when he left, both computers seemed to have a stable connection to the internet. The problem is that often that connection will drop out completely. The computer just gets no signal from the network. This often happens at the most inopportune times, like when I'm trying to transfer a large audio file to a client, or attempting to beat Lindberg's score in Who Has The Biggest Brain? on facebook. It makes me wonder if, since the internet connection is now via a USB antenna rather than a hard network connection, increased processor load will cut out the connection. Or maybe I just need to boost the Wi-Fi signal somehow. I've seen homemade solutions like tin-foil parabolas and antenna dishes made of wire colanders. Any other good methods for increasing Wi-Fi reception? I'm tempted to pick up a "wireless range extender," but I've read they're a huge mess to set up if you have any sort of access security enabled. Oh, and yes, I could set through the tech support queue at U-Verse, but I'm not sure how much they'll do for me. I actually had one tech tell me that because I was using XP, the connection may drop out from time to time. That doesn't quite make sense to me, but I really have no idea. Help?

So, as I said, I'm pretty happy, though there's one issue that I really need to fix. Not really sure if that's U-Verse's fault, though. For now, I'm still giving U-Verse a thumbs up.

Whoever thought it was a good idea to provide us with a DVR that can record four programs simultaneously did not actually know us very well. We shouldn't be trusted with that kind of power.

The new TV season is upon us, and our Series Record (formerly Season Pass) list is at 70 and counting. There are still a few more to add once they show up on the schedule, since U-Verse doesn't have a WishList function to act as a placeholder. That's one of several features that I do miss from our old TiVo, but I'm not complaining because I no longer have to deal with the logistical adventure of deciding what gets recorded digitally, analog-ly, or watched live. It just all goes on the list now. The only tricky part is deciding which ones to watch in HD, since only two of the four TV streams can be in high definition.

I'm planning to adopt (or at least sample) six new shows this season, seven if you count Stef's desire to watch the returning Life. That's still far less than last year's 12, of which only 3 (Chuck, Pushing Daisies, and Private Practice) are still on our viewing list (Stef also plans to continue with Lipstick Jungle, which was a mid-season replacement last year, and I'm gung-ho for Terminator). We gave up on a few pretty early on (Big Bang Theory, Reaper, and Moonlight), the networks gave up on most of the others (Journeyman, Back to You, Bionic Woman), and some I never watched in the first place. I don't think I made it through more than ten minutes of the Cavemen pilot, and never even realized that The Next Great American Band was on. No clue what's going on with Kid Nation. Probably for the best.

Even with this cutback, we still plan to watch a lot of TV. Why, you ask? Well, we don't leave the house much these days, and until I can teach Agricola to TK, or Stef chooses a game over knitting or stamping, it's our most efficient entertainment source.

Plus, I like TV. Always have.

Come with me now, if you dare, to see the full schedule...

Read more »

So, news came down yesterday that Stargate Atlantis would not be returning for a sixth season, instead moving to the DVD movie format like SG-1. Today, we learn from The Hollywood Reporter that SciFi has picked up the brand new series Stargate Universe, which will begin early next year:

...the show will be set on board a previously unmanned ship called the Destiny, and will involve more space-based action than its predecessors. "Unable to return to Earth, the crew must fend for themselves aboard the ship, which has a preprogrammed mission taking them to the far reaches of the universe," ...

...The new series will also be aimed at a slightly younger audience, SCI FI president Dave Howe said.

"This is an opportunity to reinvent this franchise and make it relevant to a new generation," he said. "We really don't want to be more of the same. It's going to build clearly off the existing franchise but with a cast that gives it a younger vibe."

Full article from GateWorld here.

Alarm bells are going off in my head on this one. It's weird to hear of the cancellation of a series just to make room for its cousin. I'm all for building the franchise, but this has me in cautious pessimism mode...

...AH, who am I kidding? I'll watch it. I'm a sucker for this stuff.

Anybody want to buy a slightly used* TiVo?

It's been a good four years or more since we first fell in love with the TiVo. It's Rob and Katie's fault. They showed it to us upon our first visit to their apartment. We immediately (the following weekend, if I recall correctly) ran out to get our own. Everything about the device was revolutionary: the interface, the performance, the ease of use, and the ability to follow your favorite shows automatically when they changed dates or times without your knowledge. It was the rare device that did exactly what it claimed it would do. It changed the way we watched television.

But that was four years ago. A lifetime in technological terms.

A couple of weeks ago, a salesperson from AT&T stopped by, offering to upgrade us to their new U-Verse fiber optic system. This would transfer our existing phone and DSL service to a digital phone and wireless gateway-based system, as well as offer us a wealth of digital television options. Plus, they'd give us a free month of service, and a hundred bucks. "Um..." I said, "Let me think about it a sec."

I've been resisting the upgrade of our standard analog cable hookup for a long time. Our brief experience with a cable box in Fishkill did not go well. Often, planned VCR recordings would fail because the box was tuned to the wrong channel, or turned off entirely. The TiVo has the ability to interface with a cable box, but only through a IR-based system, one that isn't 100% error free. I wasn't excited about adding an extra technological layer to our system. Still, if we ever plan on upgrading to an HDTV setup, we'll need digital cable, and Comcast just keeps raising the price of analog while removing programming from the analog lineup (last I checked, $56 a month for "extended basic"). Switching to the AT&T bundle would save us about $40 a month.

Oh, and the new system comes with a DVR. I didn't really pay attention to the specs, because I intended to continue to use the TiVo though the cable box, but in the back of my mind I heard the words "...can record four programs at once." Hmmm... interesting, I thought. We don't really need a DVR, but I guess it will be worth wading through the clunky UI as a backup to our VCR setup. I told the sales guy okay, and we set up an install date.

We got the system this past Friday. It took longer to get up and running than anybody expected, so I didn't really have a chance to fiddle with things until Saturday. Still, the TV worked, our standard Friday night recordings were being picked up by the new DVR (since the TiVo was technically blind at that point) and both of my studio computers could access the internet (though not each other, more on that in a sec), so I was pretty happy to start with.

Then I tried setting up the TiVo. Hookup cable box output to TiVo input, check. Rerun TiVo setup, uh-huh. Zip Code stays the same... Do I have cable, or satellite? Um... neither? Okay, let's try cable. Wait for it to call home... nope, the only cable option is Comcast. Okay, back up, and choose satellite. Wait for it to call home again... DirecTV or Dish Network? No, I have U-Verse now, TiVo. Where is that?

The TiVo suggested that I go to the support forums online. The official FAQs didn't help a whole lot, but a Google search soon located some other forums that addressed what I needed. See? All we have to do is call TiVo, and they'll give us a zip code that DOES include the U-Verse info... but it's not 100% correct. Oh, I can request that they update their lineup on the TiVo website, but that takes 2-3 weeks. What's this? People can't seem to get the IR blaster to change the channels on the U-Verse box. What? Need to buy a third party IR cable? Huh? Don't point it at the IR port on the cable box, but about three inches to the left of it? And remove the front cover first? What? The best results were found by holding the IR emitter two inches above the box, over the left-hand corner, and rotating it 45 degrees? Oh, and the U-Verse box has a habit of falling asleep when it's idle, requiring user input to return to programming, so you often end up with a recording in the TiVo marked "Doctor Who" that's just an hour's worth of a screen saying "Press OK to continue?"

My head started to swim. This wasn't going to work. Even if I could get MacGuyver some sort of setup that worked most of the time, there would always be that doubt in the back of my mind that something wouldn't record because the two boxes wouldn't communicate properly. We're going to have to cancel the U-Verse. We certainly can't abandon the TiVo! Our TiVo.

Or could we? After all, the U-Verse included a DVR, one that, while different, wasn't all that bad. What was I trying to do? Get my four-year-old box to interface with the brand new unit so I could get it to do exactly what the new box was capable of doing on its own. And the new DVR can record four shows at once. No more priority lists. No more VCR backup. No more needing to watch anything live ever again. Plus, it has video on demand, picture in picture channel surfing, and the ability to browse menus while the video continues in the background.

It slowly dawned on us (it took me longer than Stef). This was okay. We'd gotten our money's worth out of our TiVo. It was time to move on. Then we checked eBay. 80-hour Series 2 units with lifetime subscriptions are still going for several hundred dollars. Well, that settles it.

So, nearly all of our season passes have been migrated over to the new DVR. The TiVo's still connected, as there are a few more shows in there that we'd like to watch, but it's not set up to record anything anytime soon. Actually, it thinks it's attached to a DirectTV system and that it's able to change channels and everything. I just couldn't bring myself to tell it the truth.

This isn't to say that everything is peaches and cream with the U-Verse system. My two studio computers, which used to be hard-wired to a Linksys router in the old DSL setup, are now connected to the wireless gateway in the other room via USB wireless antennas. I'm still fiddling with the antenna positions, and I do occasionally lose the connection. My shared folders, which used to be visible between the two computers, are now missing as well. From what I can gather, it's likely a firewall issue, but I haven't had the guts to dive into both the Norton and Windows firewall settings, armed with port numbers and IP address ranges, to make it all work. Not sure what I'm going to do on that front quite yet. Do I need to call the Nerd Herd?

On the whole, though, we're pretty happy with our upgrade. Plus, since we get the first month free, we have the super-deluxe package, with, like, eight HBOs. Yesterday, I watched some classic Doctor Who on Demand. No, I'm not talking Christopher Eccleston. This is Patrick Troughton, Doctor Number Two, from 1968. Odd.

Goodbyes are so hard. Later, TiVo!

*Okay, moderately used** TiVo.

**Fine. Ridiculously overused TiVo. But well loved.

Link: http://abc.go.com/primetime/themole/index?pn=hostbio#t=contestant&d=105780

I'm staking my claim right here: I think Mark is The Mole.

It's probably WAY too early to figure it all out, since the first few challenges are built to allow everybody to screw up in some way or another. However, the fact that Mark is a history teacher, and that he wasn't able to figure out that blue jeans weren't around in 1704 has me seeing warning signs. At the very least, I'll be watching him very closely from here on out.

So far, I'm very pleased. John Kelley is a worthy replacement, and seems to have captured that Anderson Cooper spirit. From reading his show blog, it appears that he respects Cooper's take on the part, so he probably modeled his performance on that. Good call. I do miss the original Mole themes, but the new score is suitably epic, as are the locales. Seriously, you have to admit that riding on a raft over a waterfall while grabbing for a sack of cash and then dangling from a bungee line while watching your raft splinter on the rocks below is a pretty cool challenge.

(insert giant sigh of relief here)

My all-time favorite reality competition program returns tonight.

The Mole.

I'm so very excited. They'd better not screw this up. The Mole was quite likely the most intelligent reality show on the air for its first two seasons. Host Anderson Cooper was smarmy but likable, making friends with the players while reveling in their mental and physical torture. The gameplay was intricate and multi-layered, the puzzles were genuinely challenging, and the clues for the audience regarding the true identity of The Mole were devious. It kept me guessing until the end.

Then they messed it up with the Celebrity edition.

It wasn't bad, per se, just a pale shadow of the original. The international travel aspect was gone, as was our favorite host. It didn't have the same sense of epic adventure, and just felt like a group of celebs hanging out and playing games.

So, I'm really hoping this new version leans more toward the earlier seasons than the latter ones. I've come to terms with the loss of Anderson Cooper. He apparently hated doing the show, and will never return to it. I guess he's got a pretty good gig now anyway. I'm willing to let him go. But the puzzles had better be tough, the players ought to be cunning, and those clues need to be awesome.

Lewis Black once said that the anticipation of the moment is something that the real thing can never match. I really hope he's wrong, because I'm really psyched about watching television tonight.

Link: http://www.octagonglobalrecruiting.com/

I finally got around to watching the season finale of Lost during lunch today, while The Kid was napping, and I caught a seemingly innocuous recruiting commercial for Octagon Global Recruiting. It's novelty caught my attention, though, despite my TiVoing through the commercials. And lo and behold, a little bug appeared near the end, saying it was "Paid for by ABC."

So, it's ARG time again.

Sure enough, visiting the website from the ad produces a simple e-mail opt-in form to participate in a new "research project" designed to "further the interests of the Dharma Initiative."

Not that I have time for this sort of thing, but I signed up. Anybody with me?

I'm really not a comics person. I had a subscription or two growing up, The Amazing Spider-Man and Secret Wars, I think, but it didn't last long because I couldn't get into the mythology. We also had a bunch of old "kids" comics floating around the house, with titles like Richie Rich, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Donald Duck. There were short bursts of interest around a series starring The Get-Along Gang, or Archie, or even The Mad Balls (seriously?), but the fascination was brief.

The only time I ever really started collecting comics with gusto was during the whole "Death of Superman" adventure. I had been swept in by the hype, and I not only purchased the whole "Doomsday" saga, but also every issue dedicated to the "Funeral for a Friend" storyline. Then, I had to continually purchase every Superman-related book (of which there were four) for the next several months so I could find out what happened with the four possible Supermen (none of which turned out to be the actual Superman). By the time Clark Kent had returned to Metropolis, complete with ponytail, I had a gigantic stack of books, and I was suddenly invested in every storyline from every crossover involved in the event.

As an aside, this was also about the same time that Batman was dealing with his spine-related issues, and Shawn had been following that ever-complicated thread. We'd let each other read our respective series, thereby splitting the cost of keeping up with the DC universe.

Of course, this was exactly what DC was going for with the Death of Superman arc. Use a gigantic event to bring bunches of eyes to the franchise, and then cross pollinate to the entire superhero world. After all, their ultimate goal is to sell comic books. Eventually, I realized this and lost interest. The entire arc was bagged and boxed, and now sits in my basement for the day when The Kid is old enough to discover them. I had flirted with comics for the last time, I told myself back then.

But I couldn't have anticipated Buffy Summers.

Much like Superman, I was alerted to "Joss Whedon's Season Eight" through other media: a blurb in Entertainment Weekly, some web reviews, and the comments of a few trusted friends (yes, Robert*, I'm blaming you). There had been other Buffy comics on the market already, but this series held the all-powerful lure of the phrase "official canon." Rather than let Buffy fans just wallow in their irrational hopes for a continuation of the TV series, Joss was moving the story forward in another medium. If you wanted to know what really happens to Buffy after she left the smouldering crater that once had been Sunnydale, you had to read these comic books.

And read them I did. Or rather, am doing. I'm currently waiting for Issue #15 of the series, and I am certainly pleased so far. The characterization and dialogue are spot on, and while I haven't always agreed with where the story has gone thus far, it feels like the real thing.

But then, after stopping at a comic store on her way about town, Stef picked up not only the latest Buffy issues, but also the first few issues of "Angel: After the Fall," a Joss-guided continuation of the Angel storyline, from right after he went charging into the army of demons that faced him in the series finale. It, too, has the same feel as the series that inspired it, although I don't enjoy the art quite as much. It's a bit more stylized, and I find it more difficult to understand what's going on at times.

Oh, and did I mention that there's a Serenity miniseries as well? It covers events between the series and the movie. And yes, it's written by Joss Whedon.

...and here I am again. I've been sucked in (no vampire pun intended). I even purchased the trade paperback of "Shadow Puppets," a "Spike" series in which he faces the same band of "Smile Time" puppets that Angel faced in the series, but this time in Japan. It's frikkin' hilarious, but that's not the point. The point is that I'm right back where I was with Superman. I'm following three different series, and I already know there's another Serentiy spin-off in the works (this one will follow the Book character). I need to draw the line somewhere, I know.

Just not sure where that is yet.

*It's been pointed out by my lovely wife that it may have been me that introduced Rob to the Buffy comic series, and not the other way around. My response to this is that I was talking about a different Robert. A Robert... Landeraxe. Yeah, good ol' Bob and Kat Landeraxe. You know them, right? No? Good.

Link: http://www.tedmosbyisajerk.com/

I'm constantly impressed with the ways in which How I Met Your Mother extends its universe beyond the mere 22 minutes of audiovisual material that it is allotted each week. Whether it's Barney's Blog, the Robin Sparkles MySpace page, or the countdown to Slapsgiving last year, the show consistently produces entertaining peripheral content, further proving that HIMYM is one of the best comedies on TV right now.

In last night's episode, we were introduced to TedMosbyIsAJerk.com, created by a scorned lover of Barney's after he told her he was Ted the famous architect, slept with her, and never saw her again. The various pages are entertaining, but the real gem is the nearly 21 minute rant/song that plays on the main page. It's slow to get going, but there are some real neat nuggets of goodness in there, like when this woman's rage turns to love, when she talks about naming their kids, when she accuses Ted of being a Cylon, and the not one, but two red herrings regarding the identity of Ted's future wife ("the mother"). It's not a bad listen, but I'll just let you know that the plot-related moments happen at the 9:30 mark and at the very end. You'll need to reverse the second one to get the hidden message.

Oh, and the epilogue to last night's episode was frakking brilliant.

Enjoy.

And I promise I'll post more about The Kid soon.