Roger Ward

This week marks a sad day for electronic nerds the World over. Pioneer announced that the last Laserdisc player has rolled off the production lines. Never anymore successful than a niche product, laserdisc to these eyes was a revelation in the early nineties for my movie watching. The quality of the presentation was far and above what I could achieve on my BETA or VHS player and many movies were enjoyed by this  movie lover, even to this day. Looks like I’m going to have to take extra special care of my player now otherwise I’m not going to be able to play my definitive edition Star Wars trilogy set.

Well, Windows7 seems to be running quite well so far. Installation was super easy, and relatively quick too. I never had brought Vista myself, use it myself at work so the Windows7 layout seemed like a logical extension of Vista.

The new pinned taskbar is a nice feature where you can pin your most commonly used programs. It’s much better than the quick launch within the start menu of XP. Auto windows update is also a much smoother, easier experience too. Speed of the OS is surprising from these eyes. Compared to XP or Vista for that matter, Windows7 flies!

Compatibility with my exisiting software is all good so far. That said, I haven’t chucked a lot of my old legacy games on yet, that may be another story. Knock on wood.

So how did you go in your Windows7 Beta download adventure? Talk about fun just get a beta.  Microsoft have really got to overestimate the demand on something like this. Do they use commodore 64’s for servers or something??

Well obviously not, but it’s a staggering thought about the amount of data transfered in such a short amount of time: 2.5 million downloads x 3 GB image = 7300 TB = 7.15 PB. In a 12 hour download session, that would require something like a 175 GB/s connection. Glad I’m not paying the bill!

Anyway. I’m off to install. Hopefully I see you on the other side from Windows7 land.

Got the new HD Basics Blu-Ray yesterday which I’ve used to re-adjust the settings on my BRAVIA television. Previously I’d posted settings for my “X Series”, but these new settings are wildly different to my previous settings.  I quite like these new settings, they bring out excellent shadow detail with very natural colours.  Novices may not like these settings due to the fact that there are no overblown colours and a low brightness level. But the detail in return is quite astonishing compared to the previous settings.

Let me know what you think.

• Backlight: 2
• Picture: 85
• Brightness: 52
• Color: 55
• Hue: 0
• Color Temperature: Warm 1
• Sharpness: 51
• Noise Reduction: off
• MPEG Noise Reduction: Low
• DRC Mode: Mode 1
• Black Corrector: Low
• Advanced C.E.: Low
• Gamma: Low
• Clear White: off
• Color Space: Standard
• Live Color: off
• DRC Pallette 50/60
  • White Balance
  • R-Gain: -7
  • G-Gain: -7
  • B-Gain: 0
  • R-Bias: 6
  • G-Bias: 4
  • B-Bias: 0-10

• Detail Enhancer: Low
• Edge Enhancer: Low
• Motionflow: High
• Cinemotion: Auto 1

I’ve also attached images below taken after calibration. They’re not totally indicitive due to the camera, but they give a good idea of what the image is like.

Kevin Stalin????

Here in Australia we’ve had a new government for just over 12 months.  Typically for a labor government they’ve done a rubbish job. They’ve taken a 20 billion plus budget surplus and put it into the red. Rudd has also fallen for what I call the “chicken little” trick. It’s the alarmist condition that the hippies of the World use to trick us into believing that the World is coming to an end. So now they are going to propose a carbon trading scheme. (Even though as a country we don’t pollute half as much as countries like China or America). And now the do-gooder state is going to place taxes on what they would class as “unhealthy foods”. These do-gooders won’t be happy until we’re all living in plastic bubbles locked away from the world.  What a fun bunch…

Really they’ve got to be kidding. Some of these “unhealthy foods” include Vegemite, Blue Cheese and Jams because of there high salt & sugar levels. Talk about a nanny state. They want to control what we eat due to high salt and sugar contents, but things like McDonalds, KFC and Hungry Jacks are exempt. There’s something a bit wrong there isn’t it. Sounds like yet another dumb idea just like the proposed Internet filter.

Obviously Kevin Rudd loves the works of George Orwell. I remember what it was like living in a free an democratic country. Now the hippy communists and there politically correct agendas are filtering through into mainstream politics which means that for us, our lives are becoming controlled more and more. Gone are the days when Australia was a free country, where adults were allowed to make their own decisions about their lives.  First there was the Internet filter, now they’re telling us what we can and can’t eat?  Next you’ll find that Rudd will be monitoring all of  our activities, institute a blanket curfew and execute dissidents. Looks like I’m in trouble. And you thought communism was dead!

Considering it’s been six months since I started this thing, I figured that a bit of a change would be as good as a holiday. So I’ve changed the layout, hopefully you find it an improvement. I like it personally. It’s very minimalist and clean while still looking classy.

I’ve also added in my twitters to the blog as well, just in case you like punishing yourself more than once a day!

Also, I’ve found a nice online diversion. World Golf Tour. Best way I can describe it is a browser version of the classic Links series of golf games. It’s really fun for what it is. I’ve added it to the links section.

I hadn’t realised when I posted yesterday that it’s already been six months since I started this blog, time really does fly! I’ve been spending the last day or so playing around with several things on this interweb. One of them is twitter.

Twitter isn’t new to me, but I just haven’t used it since I signed up mid last year but that’s changed of late. I’ll be incorporating my twitters into the blog very soon. I’ve also been doing a little video editing of something I’ve filmed. It’s a hobby, but it’s something I really enjoy doing too. I’m considering putting up onto youtube for the whole world to see when I’m done.

Today was finally the first hot day we’ve had here this summer (only took a month and a half!) in Melbourne. Hopefully we have a few more “summer days” before it’s all up. So much for global warming!

Another evening of drunken reveling Worldwide has come and gone. Hopefully ought nine will be a lot happier for many and the problems of the past twelve months don’t effect us that much. Personally I’m confident about what the new year will bring in many ways.

So far it’s been a pretty eventful one for me. Family functions, seeing friends and spending the rest of the time enjoying my short break. It’s been a good time to catch up on quite a few discs that I’d purchased and several games I hadn’t had the chance to finish. So all in all a fun start to the year.