This really sucks, but with the news the last few weeks that Netflix, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, etc. are either abandoning HD DVD or strongly favoring Blu-Ray, it shouldn’t be a big surprise that Toshiba would soon pull HD DVD off life support.

The competition was great while it lasted. I don’t believe that prices for players and discs would’ve dropped as low as they are now if there was only one format. And those sales. Buy One Get One Free or 50% off sales are nothing to sneeze at and have made prices of brand new movies in both formats much more tolerable.

A common refrain in discussions was that people were waiting until one side “won” the format war and then they would adopt whichever format that was. While on some level this makes sense, maybe moreso when the cheapest players were several hundred dollars, I don’t know that only one format is the best for consumers. People seem to do ok with multiple video game consoles coexisting each cycle and driving competition (although it can be brutal for the losers). Often one or two exclusive games are enough to influence a purchasing decision. Similarly, with nearly all of the movie studios exclusive to one format, purchasing decisions were strongly influenced by the movies available and which studio was aligned with which format. However, the differences between HD DVD and Blu-Ray for most people were very minor and don’t usually factor in to decisions as much as they do for video game consoles. Now that Blu-Ray has effectively won, it’ll be interesting to watch the next few months to see if the rate of uptake changes and if prices continue to fall or start to settle.

We’re definitely going to hang on to our HD DVD player. Maybe someday the ten or so movies we have now will also be released on Blu-Ray, and also cheap enough to pick up again, but I don’t see that happening for some time. Additionally, the player works well as an upscaling DVD player, so we’ll still get use out of it that way. The big question now is if it’s worth picking up a few more HD DVDs while they’re cheap. Amazon.com and DeepDiscount.com are making me think ‘yes’.

It’s hard to be 100% sure that they used our images, but they’re one of the few high-quality Nobel medal images available online and we’re also the 3rd result for a Google Image search of ‘nobel prize‘. None of the other images available really look like ours, and there’s a few telltale signs (highlighting on the chin, slight leftward slant of ‘Nobel’). And, at least this time around, they didn’t use a Peace medal (which is quite different from the others). I wish I had higher quality images to compare, but these are the best I could find.

Here’s our image of the medal, followed by screenshots of the two specific episodes (most recent first). See for yourself:

Exhibit A: Linus Pauling’s Nobel Chemistry medal (1954) from our website, Linus Pauling and the Nature of the Chemical Bond: A Documentary History.

Exhibit B: The Daily Show, October 10, 2007

Exhibit C: The Daily Show, November 11, 2004

I’m very pleased that one of my favorite shows used something I had a part in. You never know what being highly ranked on Google will get you. Now I just have to get something on The Colbert Report…

Come Saturday we ventured on up to San Francisco, accompanied by Evelyn’s esteemed colleague, Kevin, who, being a native of the Bay Area, essentially served as our tour guide. Close to ten years had passed since I was last in San Francisco, on occasion of an orchestra tour while in high school, and it was Evelyn’s first visit to the city.

We began the morning at Fisherman’s Wharf, where we wandered over to a large building by the water that had a banner with “Free Admission” and something about a museum. It turned out to be the home of Musee Mecanique (or the Mechanical Museum of San Francisco), which was a wonderful surprise for us. The museum features hundreds of antique machines, nearly all in working order (especially the coin-operated part), including orchestrions, mechanical dioramas, animatronics, early video games, and other classic game machines from earlier generations. Highlights were some of the early sports games, almost anything that made music, and the modern  classics like Pole Position and Spy Hunter.

Following the museum we had clam chowder in bread bowls for lunch, enjoyed the great weather and walked around the piers. We saw breakdancers perform (put the other street performers to shame), heard live music (a very young band, weak), bought some chocolate (tasty), saw the sea lions (boring, they’re better in Oregon) and eventually got a $40 parking ticket (super weak – watch those 1 hour meters!).

We then proceeded to Ghirardelli Square, which was ultimately underwhelming, in part because a large portion was closed for construction and renovation. The Ghirardelli store was mildly interesting, but it suffers from the wide availability of so many Ghirardelli products these days, that only a few items seemed unique or exclusive to the store. We passed on ice cream, and weren’t interested in the other shops in the Square, so we left.

Our next stop was the Golden Gate Park and eventually the infamous Bridge. After snapping some pictures, we walked a ways onto the bridge, enjoyed the view, I snapped some more pictures, and then we walked back.

It was late afternoon when we arrived at the Japanese Tea Garden, only to find out that they’re not open very late during the winter months. There was still a little time before they closed, so we went in anyway. The gardens were attractive despite the time of year, with a variety of plants and garden areas and two pagodas, although the large pond being empty was disappointing.

Across the street was the San Francisco Botanical Garden. We decided to walk around there too, as there was still some time left before the sun went down. It reminded me a bit of the Oregon Garden, although it was a bit strange to realize that this place was in such a busy urban area. We enjoyed the flora and fauna (just ducks and squirrels) before heading back to the car. On our way to the other side of the city, it was getting dark, but we still drove down the super curvy Lombard Street, even in the non-agile rental car (rhymes with chorus).

Dinner was at a great Italian restaurant in North Beach, Trattoria Pinocchio. We ended the night by spending some time walking around in Chinatown. Kevin knew of a small back-alley place that made fortune cookies and he was able to find it again, so we got to have some hot cookies right off the line. In addition, we both had chocolate ones for the first time. At the last shop we visited, we picked up a small tea set, and I finally tried bubble tea for the first time.

It was a long day but we had a great time. I’ll have the pictures up soon.

My gamertag is the unbelievably creative ‘ryanwick’. In the near future I’ll mostly be playing Halo 2. Until the Nintendo Wii comes out anyway.

It’s not the cleanest looking program in the world, and some of the interface is arcane, but it does pretty much everything I wanted. It knows how to handle a DVD, allows for selecting a specific clip’s start and end points down to each individual frame, provides for cropping and adjusting the video frame, and gives more control over the output codecs than I know what to do with. There are a few interface additions that would come in handy, but with the last software update in 2002, I’m not holding out for much. It’s open source, however that means little if no one wants to work on it anymore. All things considered, FlasKMPEG is a very powerful app that will be useful for years to come.

A few minor things were more difficult than they probably should have been, and there were (and still are) problems with a couple feeds, but overall it was a smooth transfer. I reordered some feeds and changed things around from my previous setup but didn’t alter the order too much.

I really like how in Gregarius you have to mark specific items or feeds as read, otherwise it leaves them unread. This means that if you glance at something, but then move on to something else, it doesn’t get marked as read (a wonderful Bloglines “feature” that I won’t miss). Also, you can control how many feed items appear on a “page”, so if you don’t want to be hit with 100+ unread items all at once you don’t have to.

There’s a few UI additions or changes I’d make, but I’m not sure how much time I want to devote to tweaking this, as I’m very happy with the default.