With new episodes of 24 seven months away, only another couple of months of Doctor Who, Enterprise and Dead Like Me gone forever, and Stargate Atlantis and the final season of Six Feet Under still at least a few months away, I picked up a Rogers Video coupon book.
Can you blame me?
Okay, a couple of things to get caught up on. So first, the innane fun-to-blog stuff!
Speaking of “Stuff”, one of my significant concerns with all of the video rental shops removing the VHS stock to move over to all-DVD is with selection. Around the time that the ‘Big Two’, Blockbuster and Rogers Video, were making the move, I had settled comfortably into a particular Rogers Video that had a tremendous selection of old, VHS tapes of movies that I was too young to see in theatrical release.
I was suddenly old enough to give MYSELF parental guidence to view Crime dramas, horror flicks and sex comedies. No more did I have to sneak the video past my Mom, nor did I have to also rent some PG, science-fiction film so that she would quickly lose interest in the conversation when I answered her inevitable query on what I had rented.
But would that opportunistic time of my life shortly be over? Old tapes of “Porky’s Revenge” and “Creepshow 2″ would never again have the audience that they did when they initially came out on video. How many people would want to watch them, when “American Pie” gets an ‘AA’ in Canada, and the horror industry is remaking contemporary horrors, classic horrors, and even classic-classic horrors? Certainly not enough to warrant the effort of digitizing these films, dumping them on a DVD and making a crude menu system. This is where the extrodinarily low cost of DVD production comes in:
This weekend, while in HMV waiting to get Damon Albarn to sign my Gorillaz disc, I started scrounging through the DVD collection. Right there, in plain view, was “The Stuff“.
This was one of a collection of horror films I had seen countless times at National Video and Bandito Video in Barrie, and have started putting into my rotation in order to finally satisfy my curiousity. I know they’re bad films, but I want to see them anyway… only then can I die with my life complete!
Apparently, The Stuff has been on DVD since 2000, but I haven’t seen it until now. The next step for these films is to make it into the video store libraries. After that, comes the DVD treatment of “Blood Beach“!
This is a great article on “20 things gamers want from the seventh generation of game consoles“, like Xbox 360, PS3 and Nintendo Revolution.
There are points in there that I’ve been saying for years, and a large part of why I’m not a gamer despite my sometimes excessive geek-dom. Most notibly, ‘2. Give use a genre of game we’ve never seen before’. This is particularly important since they killed off Adventure gaming, FPS’s where I don’t have to solve cryptic problems, and any LucasArts game not based in the Star Wars Universe.
Another thing that turned me off the disc-based generation of consoles was during my first experience with Xbox, and the game Oddworld. The “Loading…” screen (#7 in the article). There’s also an interesting point near the end of the article, that the programmers can’t even put little games for you to play during the load screens, because someone has a patent on it. The author doesn’t mention that the main reason Nintendo never had problems with Loading screens was because of the cartridge system, that worked as fast as RAM, but stored a lot less data. However, the fact that there are no Loading screens on the Gamecube, which IS disc-based, is an interesting point to take. The programmers CAN get away without a Loading screen, but choose not to.
Funniest point made is “14. Seriously, get rid of the crates” - noting that post-apocalyptic future movies are made because of low budgets, something that the virtual world of game design shouldn’t have to suffer from. I guess it’s just as cheap to create a virtual hovercar as it is to create a virtual box.
If you’re a gamer, definitely read it. A lot of good stuff in there.
Simone’s in Paris, France right now. Already finished the London, England branch of her trip. She seems to be having an awesome time, and probably far more fun than the trip I had planned for London and Paris (Ontario)… and certainly more eventful.
I have two more topics (read: “opinions”) to comment on (read: “rant about”), but I’ll probably get bored and only comment on one.
The first is another one of my “Toronto Sucks” comments. Specifically, I’m annoyed about how the impending TTC strike was covered about three weeks before the deadline, while the impending GO strike wasn’t covered within three DAYS of the deadline. Even when it was mentioned during the news broadcasts, it wasn’t even Top Story.
Many people are affected by the TTC going on strike. However, TTC serves the commuter base of metro-Toronto - an area perhaps several kilometres in radius. The York, Peel and Durham regions cover well over a hundred kilometres east-to-west, and at least thirty kilometres north to Richmond Hill… further for Bradford and Georgetown lines.
The slight rise in the number of cars put on the road because of this shift could be just enough congestion to make a twenty minute commute into a 40 minute commute, or push a 40 minute commute well over an hour. EVERY COMMUTER IN THE GREATER TORONTO AREA WOULD BE AFFECTED. Nearly 10 million people would be somehow inconvenienced, but have no alternate plan, because the news stations didn’t see fit to let us know.
This Metro-Toronto-Elitism is also evident during every traffic report, when “Highway 404 is busy north of Steeles” fails to indicate if the traffic jam is only up to Highway 7, Major Mac, or north of Stouffville road. This is information that could mean the difference between waiting in traffic for 10 minutes, or 45 minutes. Similarly, “truck roll-over at 427″ fails to describe how traffic is affected to the North, opting instead to focus on how the 401 is slowed down as a result.
Last month I was checking out The Weather Network before leaving for work, only to find that they were using a traffic camera at 404 and Finch… I never knew that such a camera existed! What does that say about stations like CityTV when The Weather Network has more comprehensive traffic reports?
The Megacity borders effectively end outside the 401 / DVP / Gardiner / 427 rectangle when it comes to information. It’s time that Toronto news stations admit to having a responsibility to the ENTIRE Greater Toronto Area when it comes to reporting the news.
Ow.
Nastiest sting yet, to my poor, poor car.
Driving down Allen Rd., last night, on my way downtown to help Toby move. Just as I’m passing the 401 on-ramp, the console warning lights start going on… then off. Then on again, then randomly going off and on - sort of like disco lights, complete with that wrenching feeling in my gut that usually accompanies disco music.
The speedometer and tach die, then pick up again, then die, then pick up again, then both die. Out for the count. My car’s still working, but none of the electronic systems are.
I managed to get off the Allen and park in Yorkdale. After Paul came down to keep me company as I figured out what to do next, I called CAA and got a tow up to the Ford dealership near my house. Expensive, but they would be able to tell me if the problem is related to the twits who installed my stereo.
Unfortunately, it’s completely unrelated to the incompetence of Canadian Tire. The only tie there might be to the new stereo is that the 50W per channel might have been the final straw for an already weak alternator.
In addition to that, the pulleys in the engine (gonna have to HowStuffWorks.com that later) are cracked, and need to be replaced, lest an severe failure happens.
Good-bye, tax return.
This month is the half-way point for paying off the car. I’ve paid out 24 months of a 48 month financing deal.
…And I still don’t have control over the heater.
I’m still convinced that I would never drive a Hyundai nor a Kia. However, when I buy my next car, I will be giving a long, serious, hard look at those, and other cars that have extremely long-term warranties.
