dumb luck

So I was looking around the menus on my Panasonic DVD recorder. I have a DMR-ES20. I accidentally put the dvd player into progressive mode, 480p, which my poor old tv can't deal with.

The problem is that then I couldn't see the menus to set things right.

I remembered reading about a set of buttons to push to restore factory defaults, so I had my brother look it up online. While he was doing that I guessed and pressed and held stop and play at the same time. This resolved it.

I'm pretty sure this information isn't published on Panasonic's website, but I'll go doublecheck tomorrow. The buttons combo they suggest to restore factory defaults, involves pushing the up channel button. They either mean on the remote or they are mixed up, because there are no channel buttons on the console.

I'm going to test the unit out and see if it's stable. I was having trouble with erratic behaviour, a strange insistence on both being in the correct time zone (pst) and having the wrong time (+3 hours) and having trouble recording (which may have been an effect of the previous problem) and needing to do a power cycle to get back control of the unit (it would freeze and be unresponsive to remote control codes as well as buttons on the unit.)

DVD-RAM to DVD+R

I love the Panasonic line of DVD recorders. They have some shortcomings, but I really like what they've done with the technology.

I have some tv shows recorded that I wanted to transfer over to DVD+R's so that I could share them and I spent a couple hours trying to figure out how to get them from the DVD-RAM to my hard drive.

Turns out, Nero does just fine importing the video clips. Actually better than fine, because after it imports them, encoding them takes just minutes, when usually my poor old slow, 3 year old laptop usually takes a couple of hours to encode an hour long show.

I wish I knew what the difference was, because this would be an ideal format for people to share recorded tv programs with, rather than what is typically used.

Even nicer would be a DVD recorder with two trays. And, while I'm wishing, an unprecidented two sided read/write, so that double sided DVD-RAMs, (or store bought DVD videos for that matter, although I'm happy that that is going out of style, because I like the artwork to look at while I'm deciding if I want to see the movie) wouldn't have to be flipped over.

If I was to wish for something a little more modest, fixing the chasing playback so that when the recording should go from one recording to another it actually does. If you are watching chasing playback on timed recordings and the recording switches from one program to another, it goes out of record mode. This is a terrible way to have it set up. The workaround is to be attentive of the time, and before the hour turn off the recording, let the new program start and then find your place again in what you were watching.

That's not fancy. Not fancy at all.

But the rest of it does pretty well. The thumbnails are nice. I really like the chasing playback. And even though they are a little pricey, I even like the DVD-RAM format. I like the cases they typically come in, which make it all but impossible to scratch the surface. I think they should sell just the cases for parents so that they can put their kid's movies in them so they won't be scratched.

Favorite Time Travel Stories/Extraordinary Causality

Last night I watched the Star Trek compilation of time travel stories. I love and always have loved stories about time travel. Just going back or forward in time is interesting, but having wierd causality is my favorite.

So what are my favorite stories across all the different series? Usually, my favorite involve a strange twist on our usual notion of causality, something I call "extraordinary causality".


Quantum Leap: A Leap For Lisa

When Sam leaps into a younger version of Al and changes things so that Al gets the death penalty in the past and so is replaced by another person playing the hologram, I get chills. The idea of extraordinary causality has always been a favorite of mine to think about. Probably not true, but still very cool.


Star Trek TNG: Cause and Effect

The Enterprise is destroyed again and again in a time loop. The whole time loop/de ja vu thing is very cool. The whole de ja vu thing might be a little contrived, but still very compelling. There are a lot of time loop (or as Doctor Who calls them "Chronic Historesis") stories, but I think this is my favorite. I also like the Frasier was the captain on the other ship.


Frequency

Again, the whole crazy/cool notion of extraordinary causality is fascinating and very compelling. I love the final big scene where all the furniture changes and his Dad is alive to save him. Very nice.



Star Trek TNG: Yesterday's Enterprise

The shifting the reality to one where the Federation is at war with the Klingon empire and losing is pretty interesting. It's interesting that Guinan was able to remember, on an intuitive level, the original temporal event sequence. Later it sort of makes sense (in a strange way) with the fact that Guinan once lived in the nexus from Star Trek, Generations. The Tasha Yar story was quite nice, especially since it had interesting repercussions (a daughter) later in the series. Although, It's funny that the genetics of a black haired Romulan father and a blonde Human mother having a blonde daughter bothers me more than the genetics of two completely alien species having a child.


Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Wish

Not so much time travel as an alternate time line. It has what I need for an alternative time line: impact on the main time line. Not only did it remove Anya's powers, but evil vampire Willow was very funny and very cool. This was not only a great foreshadow of evil Willow, but to a prelude to lesbian Willow (although saying that way bothers me for some reason). Having her cross over into the ordinary Buffy universe in Dopplegangland was an awesome idea. I got some serious chills when Buffy and the Master were in battle fighting insignificant others on their way towards each other, fighting, Buffy dying and then Giles smashing Anya's pendant.


Angel: Time Bomb

Time becomes fractured because of Illyria's powers and the addition of Angel into the distortion somehow allows Illyria to break out of the fractured time loop being deterministic was very interesting. It goes to show that if you die in a science fiction story, you should make sure that you do so near a temporal anomaly. That way people, including yourself, might be able to save you.


Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

This story is stupid, but enjoyable. The best element was the idea that you could remember to set something up later, which in this case would happen earlier and help yourself out. The foreshadowing (if you could call it that) of the circular logic used in how they are going to get a band together was very cute.


The Outer Limits: A Stitch in Time

The Outer Limits is sometimes disappointing. There seems to be a tendancy to use the Frankenstein's monster story over and over again. It smacks of anti-intellectualism to me. This episode, however, I think is one of the best. The idea of an assassin traveling back in time to kill serial killers before their first victim has tremendous appeal.


Minority Report

Again, no actually time travel, but extraordinary causality. The scene in the mall has to be my favorite. The whole idea that if you had a real psychic (not just someone suffering from a really bad case of confirmation bias, wishful thinking and selective memory) that could predict the future is tremendously interesting.


Doctor Who: Father's Day

The new Doctor Who series is tremendous. It's as well written as the Tom Baker years and it actually has good special effects and bit part actors. Father's day had some interesting elements that are usually avoided because they are violations of "the laws of time". I think "laws" in this case is more legal than physical law, since the violation is possible, just generally a really bad idea.


Some more thoughts

I feel cheated by alternate timelines stories when they have no impact on the original. I had a problem with the in-a-mirror-darkly universe stories in the last season of Enterprise because of that lack of impact. I like nice story arcs. That's why I love everything done by Joss Whedon.

That's why I liked Babylon 5, it had some nice, big story arcs. The whole mystery of the missing Babylon 4 which turned out to be stolen by themselves was pretty cool. But now that I'm spoiled by Joss Whedon's excellent writing, it's a bit hard to watch Babylon 5. The dialogue in B-5 comes across as stilted. It's like everyone is trying to make a grand speech all the time. "All the time" might be a little harsh, but only a little.

I miss Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. I miss it a lot. At least there's Veronica Mars to tide me over until the next Joss Whedon project, whatever it may be (Wonder Woman?).

The only thing in reality that I find similarly interesting as scifi extraordinary causality is the mind-blowing quantum experiments that are done in the field of quantum optics. Once you understand the Sten-Gerlach experiment, the EPR experiment is just bizarre. The which-way experiment is completely dizzying. The double slit experiment itself, especially the Feynman Lectures on physics description of it is simply amazing.

Someday I'll work out a nice way to describe how completely bizzare quantum optics are to a non-technical audience. I tried to present it to my Science and Nonsense class last semester, but to no avail.

Netflix slowing down on purpose

I think Netflix has done something that is about one of the most foolish things they could have done. By slowing down service on purpose, but making it sneaky, they have diminished the trust consumers have in their service. I know it makes me cranky.

Now, whenever it takes more than one day for my returns to get to them I wonder, is this just natural fluxuations in the mail system, or is this them slowing service on purpose. When it takes a day between when they say (again, benefit of the doubt is now all but gone) they got the movies back and when they send out a new one, I wonder if this is slowing down on purpose also.

If, instead, they had said "We're very sorry, but the behaviour of people with 3 movies out at a time is taking us below our profit margin, so we are going to sometimes send some movies together in the same envelope to save postage." I don't think anyone would mind. It would be upfront. Maybe that solution had logistical problems at the distribution hubs, I don't know.

I used to feel great about Netflix. I would recommend it to my friends. I would talk about how nice it was not to worry about late fees. I would talk about how it's good to preview a video before deciding to buy it, because there doesn't seem to be ratings available on the web on replay value (as opposed to how good the movie is).

Actually that would make a great website. I wonder if it isn't out there already. Movies could be rated not just on how good they are, but on replay value, since those aren't the same thing. It could be tricky, though. Different people look to different things when they are interested in replay value. Complexity (part of the idea of the Sleeper Curve from a book I've been reading) would be key. I'm not sure what else.

If the slowdown is isolated to the 3 movie subscription, maybe I'll go to 4. But maybe I'll switch to Blockbuster's service.

Right now, all I know is the whole thing makes me a little cranky.