cygweb

I expected some upsets yesterday, but seven victories by underdogs (with the potential of eight with a NE victory tonight) is rare. Especially this far into the season. However, many of the games were close. The biggest surprise was SF's pounding of STL, with SF QB Tim Rattay making his first NFL start. My pickset will take a pounding this week, as I only picked IND, SD, and NE to upset. The GB-MIN game last night was interesting enough (from both a real and fantasy perspective) that I stayed up to watch it until the end.

I haven't posted about my FF teams because there hasn't been much to report. After this week I'll probably have a losing record in both of my leagues. McNabb looked much better yesterday (understatement), but you have to keep in mind it was against the Falcons. With only a few more weeks to go until FF playoffs, I'm going to have to make every move count if I'm going to have a chance.

Update (11/4): New England beat Denver in a closely contested Monday Night game. That makes eight underdog victories out of fourteen games played this week.

Don shared DT's new single with me, and I have to say it sounds pretty cool. It's the first track from their new album Train Of Thought that'll be out next Tuesday; it's called "As I Am". An MP3 single of the extended radio version is available from their website. I think I'm going to like this album better than the last one, but they would have to put out a killer album for me to rank it above Scenes From A Memory and Awake.

Kudos to Rush and their supporting cast for explaining to fans the reason the Rush In Rio DVD was produced in a letterboxed, as opposed to anamorphic widescreen, format. From a Rush.com mailing I received today:

STATEMENT REGARDING ANAMORPHIC FORMATTING ON DVD

The decision to forego an anamorphic version was due to limitations with some of the cameras used to film the concert. The majority of the concert was filmed in a 16:9 Digibeta format but due to the sensitivity of having cameramen distracting Neil during the show, mini remote cameras were used around him that could only be recorded in a 4:3 format. The issue of anamorphic was first raised in June and we investigated the option and what it would take to convert these tapes, which once the show was fully edited comprised about 25 - 30% of the footage used, to anamorphic. Since we were already dealing with a softer image, the process necessary to achieve anamorphic for these particular tapes would have degraded the footage further and many shots of Neil would have become blurred and all these shots would have really stood out from the rest of the program. With this footage comprising so much of the show it would have been become a distraction and as such lessen the experience for the viewer. The decision was made to maintain the strongest possible quality product and deliver a great performance, in what is still the most common format, while holding onto our intended letterbox look. The decision was purely one of giving the highest quality experience to all the viewers possible.

~ Allan Weinrib, Executive Producer, "Rush In Rio"

I suspected a technical issue like this was behind the authoring decision. After watching the entire concert, the footage shot by stationary cameras is apparent, but it's not too distracting. I'm just glad they're explaining the reason for the decision.

If there could have been a similar explanation given for the production problems with Vapor Trails, I'd be an even happier guy.

Yes, I was a child of the 80's. Take the test and pass it on, it's fun.

We're eight episodes in to the new season, and I have to say I'm starting to enjoy the show a lot more than last year. Giving the show the Xindi storyline and making it more serial (as opposed to episodic) has focused it in a good way. I've particularly enjoyed the last two episodes, "The Shipment" and "Twilight". The guest character "Gralik" in "The Shipment" was one of just a few three-dimensional non-primary characters the show has had. John Cothran, Jr., the actor portraying Gralik, did a great job. "Twilight" was an enjoyable execution of the "alternate-reality" theme that has produced some of my favorite Trek episodes: TOS's "Mirror, Mirror", TNG's "The Inner Light" & "Parallels", and DS9's "The Visitor".

These and the other episodes this season (save for the season opener "The Xindi") have been written by writers other than Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, and I'm glad for it. I think the changes in the show this season are working.

Did anyone else notice that they decided to change the name of the show to Star Trek: Enterprise this season? They had previously called it just Enterprise and the first credit was "Based on Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry". Also, they jazzed up the theme music this season. I thought it was more majestic the other way; the one saving grace of the prior song was the electric guitar work. (Particularly over the lyric "no one's gonna bend or break me".)

Is there any doubt that I'm at least a minor-order Trekkie? ;)

Yes, MP3's of Dream Theater's new album were leaked to the Internet. Yes, I downloaded them. Yes, as a DT fan I will of course be buying the CD next week (it comes out next Tuesday). And...

Yes, it rocks. I haven't gotten all the way through it yet, but it's got a cohesive sound, and the soloing I've heard has been better than anything I can recall on Six Degrees.

Some posters on DT's message board are disappointed with the changes they perceive in DT's style, but a changing sound is one of the strengths of progressive rock. Bring it on.

It's ironic that we were watching yesterday's Bills/Cowboys game in HD; the extra definition wasn't needed to see how glaringly poor both team's offenses were playing. That's the ugliest game I've watched so far this season. Granted, it tells volumes about how good each team's defense is playing right now.

Kevin Gilbride needs a serious talking to. And Josh Reed is starting to drop catchable balls again.

In related news, it was great to see Doug Flutie getting a "farewell tour". What a performance yesterday! He's 41 and I wouldn't blame him if he retired next season. But should he? ;)

I figured I'd try to get Train Of Thought today at the lowest price I'd seen, which was $11.99 at Best Buy. It was even published in their weekly circular. However, I show up there around their opening time and there's no TOT to be found. Two droids later, I'm told that they "might" be getting some in later, and maybe I could come back then.

Maybe not. I'll spend the $1-$2 of my time they wasted at a place that hasn't lied about having the CD.

That guy who got the most votes in 2000 recently gave a speech about the current state of freedom and security in the US. It's a compelling read.

Source: The Nation. (Their RSS feed. I'm a subscriber.)

R2-D2 is one of my favorite fictional characters. I was happy to read that he's been inducted into The Robot Hall of Fame. CMU has a history of supporting sci-fi; I remember playing many a Netrek game on *.cs.cmu.edu servers.

Source: WWDN.

My blogging energies were redirected the last couple of days; I received and set up a new server. I bought a Dell PowerEdge 400SC (what I term a "glorified desktop") that was on sale for at least as cheap as what I could have put together myself. But it's much slicker. It has a clamshell-style case and is quieter than any other computer I've ever owned. I'm still in the process of setting stuff up on it, but suffice it to say that if I decide to move this site back to my house, it will definitely run faster than it was before the move to 1&1.

What a slate of NFL games we had this weekend! I'm having a breakout pick week (I've missed only the Houston, Oakland, and Green Bay upsets), and I've picked Pittsburgh to upset the Niners tonight. 12 correct in one week is already my season high, but it would be nice to pad. I'm still about 20 picks behind the leader on Yahoo's game.

If I don't squeak out a win in my local fantasy league this week, I don't know that I'll recover enough to make it into the playoffs. We don't have a lot of great free agents laying around right now, and my team is currently suffering from quite a few injuries. It's good to see McNabb is back on track - he should get the nod next week in both my leagues.

This is the funniest pic I've seen this month.

I'm a big ActivePython fan. What I believe is the first post-Python-2.3 release is out and it's based on Python 2.3.2. Thanks, ActiveState.

I still haven't completed a full listen of Train Of Thought yet, but I already know that I'd rank it over over 6DOIT and Falling Into Infinity. Of all of Dream Theater's albums, I still dig Awake the most, followed closely by Scenes From A Memory. On TOT I've listened to the first four tracks a few times, and I currently like "This Dying Soul" (great guitar melody on the chorus) and "Endless Sacrifice" the most. "Honor Thy Father" is bold and edgy; not the kind of song you'd hear from a lot of bands.

More opinions to come.

I got a real kick out of this site. It shows data about the current usage of CMU's wireless access points. Very cool.

Spotted on Warchalking's RSS feed.

CBS shows one game each Sunday (the one that Greg Gumbel and Phil Simms call) in HDTV. Four times so far this season, we've been lucky enough to have that game carried locally. Every time I've gone to watch this game, there's been a delay between the time our local affiliate begins broadcasting the game and when they "flip the switch" to the HDTV feed of the game. It's like someone's asleep at the wheel; I've called the affiliate twice now to ask them to flip the switch.

I'm a huge fan and user of both Ogg Vorbis and Icecast2. I just found out that Vorbis v1.0.1 was released last Thursday, and that Icecast2 has officially entered beta testing. It's been what I consider a "stable alpha" for quite a while.

I've recently re-launched WCYG (my streaming Vorbis station that uses Icecast2, Oddcast, and Foobar2000) since the build of my new server. If you'd like to give it a listen and would like the address, let me know.