TECHnically we’re both!
A big thanks to @julien for finding this awesome video. Those Mountie suits suit sure do bring back some memories of driving around the English countryside doing my part for international relations.
We’re all taking the day off tomorrow to celebrate being Canucks. We’ll be back on Thursday to record our second DadCast. In the meantime please enoy some more Canadian Videos on our behalf.
Continue reading ‘Happy Canada Day!’
Time for toy shopping. I’ve been looking into buying a GPS for awhile. My first instinct was to look into what Garmin had to offer. Why Garmin? Well I actually couldn’t find anyone who owned a TomTom to ask them about their experience.
So off to the big box electronic store. We were going on a road trip the next day, so we went up to a mid-range Garmin and an equivalent TomTom and entered in our destination. Right away there was a clear winner – TomTom.
Once again I’m calling out Research in Motion for being web idiots. How can a Canadian company still not have a French version of their own site in Canada and yet have a Spanish version in the States and a French only site in France.
I love watching movies. It’s a break from the daily routine and from reality that most of the times gives me a rush or moves me.
Of course, I’m not talking about sappy, boring, make me want to gag movies. Thankfully I haven’t had to watch one of those at the theater since I got married. The courtship is over baby!
“I know, I know, I’ll sleep on the couch”.
The main irritant I now have with the new technology is that some engineers came up with a standard that would make images clearer, sharper, more intense and, probably more importantly, would provide more information to the eyes and brain in a landscape format. High Definition has arrived.
Now, I’m still on my old small 4:3 screen. Why? Because I cant make up my fricking mind:
As if that wasn’t enough of a pain, we all have the privilege of watching movies filmed in movie aspect ratios, either 1.85:1 (widescreen standard ratio) or 2.35:1 (anamorphic widescreen ratio) that will always display a black bar at the top and bottom of my new potential 16:9 TV.
Why the hell couldn’t they go with one of the already set standards?!?
Well, it seems that the answer to that is not clear but in essence they couldn’t go to the other ratios without significantly impacting the old standard 4:3 that has been the de-facto format for TV for the last 50 years. Watching a 4:3 image on a 16:9 is bad enough as it either greatly distorts the image (people look really wide, yes Johnny Cannuck wider than you normally look) or cuts in to the image to show the properly ratioed image to remove the black bars that would normally appear on either side. In 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 it would be worse.
I will get an HD TV, I have a size in mind, I have a model, I will get an HD package, I will get the HD-PVR and I will get a Blu-Ray player.
So here I stand, a defeated man, you want to know why? Many TV shows playing on TV are filmed or presented in 4:3!!
By the way, there is no HD flavoured popcorn. Darn.
As requested here are some good links into the topic:
About formats: http://www.projectorcentral.com/formats.htm
About aspect ratios: http://www.crutchfield.com/S-S0yZLkR8PYC/learn/learningcenter/home/aspect_ratio.html
Defining your true need: http://www.cnet.com.au/plasma-vs-lcd-six-things-you-need-to-know-339273215.htm
General debate over plasma and LCD: http://www.cnet.com.au/plasma-vs-lcd-which-is-right-for-you-240036500.htm
Another Plasma vs LCD debate but with good scales: http://www.plasmatvbuyingguide.com/plasmatvreviews/plasma-vs-lcd.html
LCD vs Plasma cs Projection: http://www.projectorpeople.com/resources/lcd-plasma-projector.asp
Good hunting. I’ll keep you posted when I decide on my winner.
The honest truth is not and will probably never be that Windows is better than any Mac, its just not so. Microsoft in its infinite wisdom choose to buy technology from other companies, tried to make it look uniform and told the hardware vendors out there that as long as you were close enough to the x86 Intel architecture, the system would run. Plus, it needed to support MS-DOS (eh eh eh that’s the extra kick in the pants). This created a price war on the hardware not the OS or the software.
In its inception, Apple put a stranglehold on the software AND the hardware for its system. If it wasn’t made by Apple, if it wasn’t sold by Apple and if it simply wasn’t an Apple, it wouldn’t work. This severely restricts a market. It does however guarantee a better control on the behaviour of the entire solution in terms of bugs.
In my opinion, Windows choose the open market, Apple choose the elitist market. Both choices are smart, it just makes the distribution avenue of one larger than the other. It also provides more potential for growth for MS’ market shares. The obvious downside is that since everyone has an MS solution, mischief intent people will go where the pain will be felt by more people: Windows. It’s a simple rule to ‘15 minutes of fame’. Anyone remember “Mafiaboy”? Anyone have a commonly known name of a hacker that worked on a Mac (yeah I could find one on the net but that’s cheating)?
I still think Mac’s are better and more stable than Windows. Every new version outdoes its predecessor, whereas with Windows, everyone remembers the ultimate replacement to Windows 98Se: ME (Multiple Errors) or Windows 2000 (I can’t do anything on my computer now!), and the latest one, Vista (I want to be a Mac on steroids, but I got the cheap stuff from my dealer).
Ultimately, in my mind, it’s a price thing. If I can afford 2 computers, one for the adults and 1 for the kids, for the same price as a Mac, I hate to say this, but I’m sticking with Windows.
Next time: why the heck did they go 16:9?!?
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