24-hour news == crap

Society

Today, CNN turns 25. To that I say: bah. CNN was once useful.

As we were traveling last week, we spent time in different waiting rooms. One had Fox news on; another, CNN. I had never really seen Fox broadcasts, and haven’t watched much CNN in the past 5 years either. The lack of any kind of actual news on Fox was terrible, and CNN was almost as bad too.

Here are the big stories of the time, in the eyes of Fox and CNN:

  • A child managed to climb into a stuffed-toy machine
  • A tree climber rescued a cat
  • What Michael Jackson wore to court

Fox, for some stupid reason, broadcast in front of a live audience. So, on Fox, we also got to hear what the audience thought of stuffed-toy machines, cat rescues, and Michael Jackson. Let me tell you, it was nothing newsworthy. Fox also seemed to try to turn these non-stories into national partisan debates at every opportunity.

Here are some of the stories of the time that we heard nothing about:

  • Changing 200 years of Senate rules (the filibuster issue) (CNN gave this about 30 seconds out of an hour)
  • The upcoming votes on the EU constitution
  • The trouble facing the ruling party in Germany
  • The UK elections
  • Continuing genocide in Sudan

Thank you ever so much, CNN, for inspiring two other 24-hour non-news channels. And it is truly fascinating how you have been doggedly trying to remove any actual news from your channel as well.

Maybe in 25 years, you’ll call it the Cable Tabloid Network. It would be more true.

HDTV Works! Woohoo!

MythTV

Finally, HDTV is completely working in my MythTV setup.

The pcHDTV 3000 card is working nicely with the DVB drivers.

My problem was playback performance. After switching to nVidia cards, this is fixed.

I got a nVidia Geforce 6800 card for my main workstation. Overkill for MythTV, yes, but it is a stellar performer with games. Absolutely great. I can run my games at 1600×1200 to take advantage of the native resolution of my flat panel, and they all work great — no framerate problems at all.

Very nice.

When Newsreaders Aren’t

Software

I clicked on a headline for an article titled Firefox news readers run the gamut. Sounded interesting; I’m not particularly happy with slrn, but I use it because there’s nothing better.

I thought it would be odd that there would be more than one newsreader, and one integrated into Firefox no less. So I was curious and clicked the link.

Surprise — it wasn’t talking about news readers at all, but rather RSS aggregators.

GRRR.

A news reader should be for *Usenet*.

Speaking of which, RSS is superflous. One could use NNTP to publish headlines and summaries anyway, and not require the development of a whole slew of software for yet another annoying protocol.

What Do You Take On Your Laptop?

Online Life

I’m writing this as I’m preparing my laptop for our trip.

My first two questions for a trip are: do I take the laptop and do I take the camera?

Both are rather bulky compared to the other items I would take with me, and both are by far the most valuable item I’d have.

For many trips, I leave them behind so I don’t have to worry about them. It can be easier to just enjoy things that way, and sometimes it’s nice to not have e-mail and Haskell available as distractions. I find myself doing things I wouldn’t otherwise be doing sometimes.

On the other hand, sometimes it’s nice to be able to have a secure way to check my e-mail on the road. (I never trust public machines/terminals, way too easy for them to become infected with spyware.) Sometimes it’s nice to have things to do, too. So here’s what I’m loading my laptop up with for this trip:

  • A full sid mirror, binary-only, for its architecture. I already have a copy elsewhere on the LAN, and I have enough spare disk space, so it makes sense. I always hate being stuck somewhere without a ‘net connection and really needing some package.
  • Several books, mostly from Project Gutenberg.
  • Updated recent checkouts of stuff from my darcs repository.
  • Maps, lists of free hotspots, and information about the cities I’ll be in
  • Current copies of my e-mail (via OfflineIMAP) and Usenet news (via newsx) to read/work with
  • Docs and references for GHC and any other programming tools that I might wish to use
  • Some MP3s
  • One CD-RW, in the drive, in case I need to exchange data with anyone

What does everyone else load up on their laptops?

Christopher Plummer

Movies

You probably know of Christopher Plummer, who played Captain von Trapp in Sound of Music way back in 1965.

Many people have this nostalgic Disney-like image of Plummer. So, I find it amusing to note what he’s been working on since:

  • Voices in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004)
  • Narrator in The Gospel of John (2003)
  • Dracula 2000
  • General Chang in Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and Star Trek: Klingon Academy (2000 video game)
  • Dragnet (1987)
  • Sherlock Holmes in Murder by Decree (1979)
  • Sir Charles Litton in The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)
  • Duke of Wellington in Waterloo (1970)

Quite a varied tale. Speaks to his skills as an actor, I guess.

And we’re off…

Travel

We’re off on another Amtrak trip, this one to New Orleans by way of Chicago and Washington, D.C. Our train leaves at 3AM.

Some have asked us why we are passing through Washington on our way to New Orleans. That’s because the point of the trip is not really its destination, but the travel. We’ll get to see parts of the country we’ve never seen before, and with the best possible view, too.

This circuitous route will take a few days to get us to New Orleans, but that’s fine. I find that somehow I always over-pack things to do while onboard the train. I usually get less reading done on the train that I do in a much shorter plane trip. Perhaps it’s because there’s more to do on the train than eat peanuts and stare out the plane window at nothing. On the train, we can meet interesting people, watch scenery close enough to actually observe — and from much closer than is possible on an interstate or a plane. It’s a great way to travel.

I’ve written blog posts in advance and scheduled them to automatically appear periodically while we’re gone. I just hope the blog spammers stay away for awhile.