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And so it ends
I spent the bulk of my Saturday with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. It has been 8 years since I picked up Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone from the recommended books rack at the Dublin Barnes and Noble and every book since has been a winner.
If you have any interest in Harry, then you need to read the Deathly Hollows for yourself – before the spoilers track you down.
Networked Tivo
I finally networked our Tivo last week, after two and half years. My first excuse was that I didn’t want to run cable up to the Tivo. My second excuse was that Tivo didn’t support WPA on wireless. Then I found the Tivo AG0100 , and I ran out of excuses.
The hardest part of the installation was typing in my WPA password. Once that was over, it was clear sailing.
Hit me with a Hot Note
I was just thinking that if YouTube was really useful then it would have a clip of Donna Murphy singing “Hit me with a Hot Note” from What about Joan. And then I thought, “how do I know that it doesn’t?”
It turns out that I need to eat my words thoughts, because YouTube does have the clip:
Where were the Clydesdales?
All in all, a fairly nondescript Super Bowl.
The Colts owned the 2nd and 3rd quarters on the field, even if the score didn’t show it. So even though the game really was in doubt until Kelvin Hayden’s interception return for a TD, it didn’t seem like it was in doubt.
And the ads didn’t wow me either. They were ok, but nothing really grabbed me. And the Clydesdales never made their appearance.
Where where the Clydesdales?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I happened upon Shattered Glass while cable grazing the other day. I had seen it before, and it was still good the second time around. Hayden Christensen never worked for me as Anakin Skywalker; but I liked him as the endearing, but cloying, Stephen Glass.
One of the takeaways from the movie is just how easy it is to subvert the fact checking process. Glass fabricated the background to many, perhaps most, of his published stories. And the fact checking process didn’t find a thing.
It also illustrated our willingness to trust our own. How easily we look away and accept favorable spin. We believe because we want to believe.
Which leads me to our title: Who will guard the guardians? It is far too common for insiders to condone the failings and foibles of their own. Whether it is truly independent auditors for business or the separation of powers in government, we need outsiders as a check on the power of the insiders.
Lame 8300HD UI
The Take the First Step household has two Digital Video Recorders: a Toshiba SD-H400 Tivo and a Scientific Atlanta 8300HD.
At the time, the 8300HD was our only option for an HD DVR. And if we had never used a Tivo, then we might have been impressed with the 8300HD. But we have, and we aren’t. Because the 8300HD user interface is lame.
The 8300HD UI allows you to watch one show while viewing your recorded programs, limiting the list of recorded programs to only 5 lines. The combination of a 5 line display, no folders and temperamental scrolling makes the selection of a show to watch a real adventure. And the recording logic isn’t smart enough to avoid recording multiple instances of the same episode.
All in all, I would have to say that the best feature of the 8300HD is that it is rented not owned. Because we are replacing it with a Series 3 Tivo as soon as I’m confident that Cablevision is supporting cable cards.