Bucky?

If you occasionally enjoy reading comic books and are even further out-of-the-loop than I am, the following contains spoilers for The Death of Captain America.

Let me get this straight.

Captain America’s sidekick, Bucky... One of the few comic book characters that had managed to stay dead... Who’d become a symbol of a character who stayed dead... Whose death served a major role in Captain America’s character... Whose death served as a reason why Marvel heroes don’t have kid sidekicks...

Is back from the dead.

...and...

Cap dies and the retcon’d back to life Bucky becomes the new Cap.

My head hurts. I’m going to have a little lie down now.

More of the same

If it’s more of the same on both sides, I’d rather have more of the Clinton years than more of the Bush years.

PS2 progressive scan & DVDs

In the Playstation 2 as DVD player saga, there was one tricky bit. To enable 16:9 and progressive scan, you have to start a DVD, hit “stop” twice, and then go to the settings menu. If you don’t hit stop twice, the 16:9 and progressive scan options won’t even show up.

And I believe this is only available on the newer, smaller PS2s.

The good news is that Sony actually has a knowledge base article on this on the PS2 support web site.

Presidential debate 08 impressions

Jim! You’re a moderator, not a therapist!

It seems kind of ironic how McCain keeps emphasizing how he’s worked on these things his whole career and still hasn’t made progress on them.

Barack, we need to invest in education beyond science and technology. We may need to improve, but we need to be more well-rounded too.

McCain, the guy who has been signing all those spending bills is your president.

We had a surplus under a Democratic president, a Republican president who never saw a spending bill he didn’t like, and a Republican presidential candidate complaining about greed on Wall Street. O_O

Hmm. McCain has been to all these foreign countries, yet he still has shown very poor judgement about them.

PS2 DVD

When my wife and I bought our first Playstation 2, it was also our first DVD player. Using the game controller as a DVD remote wasn’t so great. Some companies made remotes that came with a sensor you plugged into the controller jack. That didn’t prove much better.

Soon enough, we had a regular DVD player. Besides, we wanted a “progressive scan” model to take advantage of the HDTV we’d bought. We didn’t have any HD programming yet, but we had plenty of DVDs.

Eventually, some Playstation 2 games featured progressive scan mode as well. With “component video cables”, we could also use our TV’s extra resolution with those games.

When the U-Verse box was being installed, I realized the DVD player and Playstation 2 had claimed both component inputs on the TV. To get HD from U-Verse, it needed to be connection via component cables too. (My TV is pre-HDI.)

Not too long ago, our Playstation 2 gave up the ghost. So, we upgraded to one of the new thinline models. Turns out the new Playstation will play DVDs in progressive scan mode. It also has a built-in remote-control sensor.

The U-Verse box (like most cable and satellite boxes) comes with a remote you can program to control TVs, DVD players, and other components. Sure enough, the first code for Sony DVD players worked with the Playstation.

So, much happiness. It seems the Playstation can pull double-duty as a decent DVD player. Freeing up the component inputs the DVD player was using for the U-Verse.

U-Verse first impressions

AT&T U-Verse brings what they always told us fiber optic cables would. A single data connection goes into a U-Verse “gateway”. Out of the gateway comes telephone, video, and Internet.

The U-Verse digital telephone is VOIP, but the gateway provides POTS. It’s hooked directly into the existing wiring in the house, so—to my phones—nothing has changed. AT&T even installs a UPS for the gateway so that your phone will still work if there’s a power outage. Perhaps the best part of the U-Verse phone service is that you can check your voice-mail online. Does this mean iPhone-esque visual voice-mail for my home phone? We’ll see. I haven’t gotten a message yet.

The U-Verse video also hooked directly into my house’s existing video cable. It’s a digital signal—not straight video—over the coax, so you need a set-top box for each TV. The living room box includes a DVR. Both boxes support HD. You can’t currently watch recorded shows from the non-DVR box, but the tech that installed it tells me they’re currently testing that capability. So far, it’s at least comparable to Dish Network. I don’t think we lost any channels, and we did gain a few that I wanted. With the Dish DVR, we could only record two programs at once (and it mattered which TV you set up the recording from). With U-Verse, we can record up to four shows simultaneously. Perhaps the best part is that you can search for programs and manage recording online.

From a user interface perspective, the video service is as good as any other service I’ve used. Looks really good, though. Very slick.

The Internet service is pretty straightforward. The gateway acts as a router (NAT) and Wi-Fi access point. I turned off the Wi-Fi since I have a Time Capsule. Currently, both the U-Verse gateway and the Time Capsule are doing NAT. I’ll probably disable NAT on the Time Capsule.

Of course, bundling all these services has cons as well as pros. A single-point of failure for multiple services being the most obvious disadvantage.

I have to say, the guy who did the installation was knowledgeable and efficient. I was lucky that I didn’t have any problems with signal strength or needing additional wiring or anything, but I’m sure this guy would’ve handled any challenges as well as could be done.

So, those are my first impressions. Anyone who’s interested in my impressions after I’ve lived with it for a bit, give me a poke when your ready for a follow-up, and I’ll try to oblige.

McD&D

4e sort of feels like a McD&D to me.

—Rach