It's A Binary World 2.0

Insights on fatherhood, technology, culture, photography, and politics

Disney Princess Culture Part 1

| May 6, 2013

  I titled this Part 1 because I am sure I’ll have to revisit this topic in the future. Scarlett is only 1 and she barely cares for television, much less Disney animated films. However, if you don’t think about the future, it has a way of surprising you and finding you unprepared. Of course, [...]

How Best to Rip and Manage Your Own (legally purchased) DVDs to create your own Netflix Instant

| February 27, 2012

I had two reasons for starting this project: 1) my wife and I like to collect Disney movies from our youth.  These movies are most likely to be watched by kids and kids are likely to damage DVDs.  I’ve heard lots of anecdotes on the net from parents who are on their fourth purchase of [...]

Terry Gilliam’s Brazil

| January 25, 2011

I recently saw Terry Gilliam’s Brazil after hearing discussion of the main character being a hacker as part of a recurring segment on The Command Line where the podcaster compares characters from literature and movies to hackers (in the original sense of the word).  Watching this 1985 movie in 2011 was a very interesting experience. [...]

Review: Scott Pilgrim vs The World

| January 3, 2011

It took a bit of convincing from Dan, but eventually I read the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels.  I knew right away that this was a book written for people like me.  Just like Dr Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog, people older or younger than me would never get the full appreciation of all the references.  I thoroughly hated the [...]

Using Boxee for the First Time

| December 8, 2010

My wife enjoys watching TV a lot more than I do. I prefer interactive or creative pursuits like programming, photography, or video games. If, tomorrow, all the TV studios said we could no longer use the Internet to freely watch their programs (with ads, of course), I wouldn’t buy cable. Once I’d broken that shackle, [...]

Subtitle

| December 1, 2010

After this blog post it shouldn’t be a surprise that I was quite annoyed at the United Artists AFI edition of the movie, “Fiddler on the Roof”.  I was watching it for the third time a couple weeks ago and, as is our habit, I turned on subtitles.  Neither Danielle and I are deaf, but [...]

Infinity is Here: A Toy Story 3 Review

| July 4, 2010

As I mentioned yesterday, all went to see Toy Story 3 (in 2D) at a 2230 showing. We mostly had the theatre to ourselves – it was somewhere between one quarter and one half full – great for a movie that hadn’t been out very long. But, we are odd ducks in our hatred of [...]

Review: Inglourious Basterds

| May 13, 2010

It’s been 65 years since World War II ended. We seem to be more obsessed with it than ever. There are two big reasons for this. First, WWII is the last war we unequivocally won and which had a clear, morally reprehensible enemy. Korea was a tie, Vietnam was a loss, and our only other [...]

Review: Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland

| March 14, 2010

I’m a big Tim Burton fan and I also tend to like his casting of Johnny Depp.  But I’m no fanboy:  I found Tim Burton’s take on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to be worse than the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  The first thing I have to get off my chest and [...]

Who do I need to slap upside the head?

| January 6, 2010

Every once in a while, while reading Wikipedia to try and figure out why some show from my childhood isn’t available on DVD, I read that music rights are holding back the DVD.  I understand that these shows were created back before DVDs and, therefore, some kind of weird legal loophole is keeping the tv [...]

WALL*E is, hands down, the best Pixar Movie Ever!

| June 30, 2008

I don’t recall if I’ve ever mentioned it on this blog, but I hate going to the movies. I’ve nearly given it up. The only exceptions are Pixar movies and the very few movies that I can’t wait until they come out on DVD to watch. So today I went to see WALL*E with my [...]

Big Buck Bunny has been Released to the net!

| May 30, 2008

Big Buck Bunny from Blender Foundation on Vimeo. Here’s the Blender Institute’s latest movie.  It’s much, much better than Elephants Dream.  Check it out!

Upgrading to Mythdora 5.0

| May 5, 2008

Written Friday, 2 May 2008 Today I decided to upgrade my Mythdora to the latest verison, 5.0. I downloaded the CD media and booted into the install. I had to do a text install to be able to watch it on my TV. Then I just needed to yum install the kmod-nvidia drivers. (Although, first [...]

Another Look at Thoggen (Part 3)

| February 3, 2008

So, to wrap up a review I started a long time ago. So I took a good look at the files and I had an xvid at 704×400 (I cropped a little) and an ogg theora with 720×480 resolution. Generally speaking, the ogg theora had much better audio/video sync. Throughout the entire film, the audio [...]

Is it really stealing?

| October 5, 2007

Publishers often refer to prohibited copying as “piracy.” In this way, they imply that illegal copying is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them. If you don’t believe that illegal copying is just like kidnapping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word “piracy” [...]