Just how we roll in the desert.

CHSeT (Cousin High School English Teacher): You would be proud; I used and episode of “Star Trek:TNG” in class!

Me: Next time DS9… more thematic english type elements.

CHSeT: We watched the pilot. Our theme for the year is “what does it mean to be human” and we are doing a unit on confilict. What better episode then “Q” putting humanity on trial?

CHSeT: IDK what’s sadder though, that some didn’t like it. Or that many didn’t understand it!

Me: the “BattlestarGalactica” mini series from 2003

Me: I weep for the next generation of students

CHSeT: Was that pun intentional or just a stroke of ironic genius?

Me: Yes.

 

So knowing the audience for this blog, I know that all of you know that the pilot episode was “Encounter at farpoint” and as Renee would say… “the first couple years of TNG are a bit rough”…. In 1987 we were still in the Cold War, little did we know it would be over in 2 years and those early episodes had the same “hope for the future” quality that the orignal Star Trek episodes had… My overriding memory of that episode is one of great underlying tension throughout the episode.   Again overtones of the cold war.

A high school freshman is typically around 14 years old…. which puts them born in 1998 (dear lord I was in college in 1998) high school students today have no concept of the “soviet threat” (not that I did at 14 (which was in 1993, and at that point the cold war was officially over and the major concern was rouge nuclear warheads… my how times haven’t changed)) the boogeyman for todays kids are al-qaeda and sleeper terror cells.  Much diffrent from the supreme soviet threat.

I guess the part that has me most disturbed is TNG marked the start of a mini golden age of sci-fi on TV… Star Trek:TNG/DS9 (and to a much lesser extent Voyager), Babylon 5 (fuck you Curtis, B5 is awesome!), Farscape, Stargate SG:1.  TNG even influenced shows as distant as the new “Battlestar Galactica” (Ronald D. Moore creator and executive producer of the new Battlestar Galactica was a writer for TNG back in the day).  I guess at the end of the day I’m more sad that my beloved sci-fi channel has become the “syfy” channel and now runs shows that are more soap opera then somewhat episodic science fiction…. I’m looking at you ‘Eureka”

I think in the final assessment I can’t fault me cousin for choosing “Encounter at Farpoint” for the course material, but for the record I tend to thing that “Best of both worlds” (parts 1 and 2) are a less obvious and far better example of human conflict and what it means to be human. Mainly because the writing was much better and it has the borg, and honestly who doesn’t like a good borg episode of Star Trek?

Excuse me while I go watch more Dr. Who.

I haven’t forgotten you old friend I will return with new stories, musings, and deep technical thoughts that only matter to me.

I’m not going to lie though… I’m glad I had my username and password saved in Chrome… it would have been very embarrassing to be locked out of my own word-press blog.

11 years ago I was a senior in college seriously doubting my degree choice and deciding to stick it out merely because I was so close to being done.

11 years ago I thought I had found the one… I’ve since found “the one” several more times :S

11 years ago I was 2 months from getting a 99 tacoma… and 5 years 2 months from a 05 Tacoma….

11 years ago my closest friends were in the military serving their country or in college or in the case of one not even in high school yet.

11 years ago I had 3 roommates… one dissappeared into the ether, one married his girlfriend and another will get married in the next year.

11 years ago I started this “blog” because I didn’t want to study for a cobol final. Yeah that’s right Cobol.

That’s how Not A University rolls.

For starters I only have one TV so the whole HD over IP is a non-starter for me, but I do have a fair amount of media in DVD format that I would like to have accessible at my fingertips.  DVD conversion of media is another topic for another day, and honestly it’s more planning and process then actual problem so it’s not worth talking about.

I’m talking about the various digital outlets that I’ve gone to for my media more and more in the last couple of years. Basically it comes down to a simple oxymoronic premise I don’t want to be tied to a single service or outlet (iTunes, Amazon, Netflix) but at the same time have one file and device to rule them all.

Let me break it down for you, I have cable for one reason at this point ESPN and Fox Sports AZ, honestly those two things are barely enough to keep me on cable.  The only reason that I’m not a cord cutter is I have not devised a way to easily get my media onto my HD tv.  That problem is more a function of me being in a not research mood over the problem then anything else. As all great questions in the technical realm begin for me, I make a blog post about it.

How 2003 of me.

Ok so basic dilemma I have shows that I do want to watch, that I would like to not pay for if possible (and for the sake of argument and a paycheck lets just go ahead and say that bit torrent and it’s ilk are no longer a good way to go) so anything that is over the air is captured easily enough by a HD antenna and a recording device (hello TiVo) ok there are a few shows that watch that are not over the air… things like Top Gear… and damit if I’m going to watch six figure cars go fast I want to see them HD.   So things like that tend to be avalible in two spaces iTunes or Amazon which on a feature basis are pretty much at a even level with one another.   I have content from both of these providers so I’m not breaching new territory here either, which again I do like.  So the cruxt of the problem comes down to content and how it’s delivered to my TV.

In the case of amazon it’s almost all via a streaming type delivery with a download avalible in some case.  Essentially everything lives in the cloud though.

The iTunes model depends on a download to a device and then from the device it’s either watched on the device or streamed to another node on the network (HD over IP light)

Basically what I think this means is I need to get a Roku box and just use that.