Puttering in the Study

Sailing to Byzantium: an architectural companion - OsbertLancaster

This delightful book was one of a pair of John Murray-published books (this one 1969 - the other 1899) on the architectural history of the Byzantine Empire that I picked up at Nicholas Potter books in Santa Fe a couple of weeks ago.  It is a small architerctural companion by Lancaster, a noted British cartoonist, explaining Byzantine architecture to travelers who might encounter isolated examples throughout the Eastern Mediterranean.  It begins literally with the Christians' move aboveground into their first churches following the Emperor Constantine's adoption of the religiion in the fourth century, and then explains the architectural differences between the churches that occurred as the Eastern and Western churches diverged over the centuries.  I liked it very much.

A Man on the Moon - The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts - Chaikin, Andrew

I picked up an old Penguin paperback of this book I've been wanting for several months at Wolfmueller's (very excellent) bookstore in Kerrville, Texas two weeks ago, and have been devouring it in large chunks ever since.  This book was the basis for the Tom Hanks-produced HBO series From the Earth To The Moon, and I decided was probably the comprehensive history of the Apollo program that I'd been looking for.  I now think that's not correct - it's a history of the astronauts that actually flew the missions, not the program, but who cares - this is one of the best nonfiction books I've ever read.  I can't say enough about how interesting it is, or how much I learned.  You really get the sense that Chaikin did an outstanding job of recognizing that the astronauts were not going to do a very good job telling their own stories of what they saw and experienced, and coaxing it out of them.  Really great book - now I have to locate a hardback copy - preferably signed by the author - and then start working through other books on th history of the program and with more photos - the 17 pages on black & white on cheap paper in this edition were woefully inadequate for my curiosity.

Black on Broadway - Lewis Black

As long as I was ordfering Kathleen Madigan, I had to get a couple of Lewis Black's most recent DVDs as well - he's my other favorite comic.  Surprisingly, and I need to actually watch this again, I didn't care for long stretches of this DVD.  It was slow, and not particuarly funny for some reason, unlike what I'd heard on XM Comedy.  His style and timing make a lot of things that are marginal still funny, but some of the subject matter (it snowed in New York during the winter - who would have guessed?) just didn't seem to fit the Black outrage schtick real well.  I still laughed awfully hard - don't get me wrong - but it just wasn't as funny as I was expecting.  Still have a second DVD to watch, and I think its content (seems to be more current political events) may be better.

Kathleen Madigan - DVD and CD

I'd been telling Jamie for months that there was this female comic on XM Comedy that was just hysterical, but I could never remember her name - until she was one of the judges on Last Comic Standing, which Jamie and I have been watching semi-religiously.  She liked her as well, so I ordered her CD and recent DVD and we listened to both on the way to Dallas recently.  Both were funny, although the timing on the DVD takes a little getting used to.  Unlike radio, there are frequent pauses as Madigan takes a swig of water (why they didn't just remove the label I have no idea since they have to blur it our everytime she picks it up).  For some reason that really breaks up the timing I'm used to.  But I did enjoy both very much.  I also but I really liked the way she shows up on stage in the DVD fashionably coiffed and made up wearing heels and a tailored suede jacket with her jeans.  I just thought it was a nice appearance, unlike some of the sloppy getups I've seen other comics in.  Just made her seem to take what she was doing a little more seriously, and made her look more professional.

A Valley in the Clouds - David Arkenstone

I've started looking at buying some of the New Age music I listen to on Audiovisions on XM, and the first artist I recognized was David Arkenstone.  His first album in 1987, Valley in the Clouds, seemed to be a good start, so I picked it up a couple of weeks ago.
On first listening, the thing is teeth-aching New Age, with relatively primitive synthesizers, but on repeated listening (I've learned that I virtually never like something the first time I hear it) I've really started liking it.  Once you overall the somewhat dated instrumentation (which you really can't fault it for) it's actually quite good.

Fredericksburg trip - Hangar Hotel & Nimitz Musem

A couple of weeks back I had a bar association meeting in Fredericksburg, Texas.  We stayed at the Hangar Hotel, which is literally a hotel inside an old hangar at the airport.  It, and the adjacent conference center and diner which are built inside what is supposed to look like a hangar, are both World War II themed, and the whole experience was like watching the menu for the Pearl Harbor DVDs which, if you know me, is a good thing.
I also made my first trip to the Nimitz Museum (now the National Museum of the Pacific War) in fifteen years, and was really impressed with the new exhibits.

The Mummy - Stephen Sommers

Stephen Sommers' The Mummy is still one of my all-time favorite movies, due in large part to the humor in it.  Last night the boys let me watch our new HD DVD copy, but wouldn't watch - they said it would be too scary (although Parker came in and watched the end and found it very funny as well - said he wasn't scared).
The movie is a good one for HD treatment - the CG is great in high resolution, although it does show shortcomings in the CG.  But the real reason is that you see things you didn't in the VHS or even DVD versions.  For example at the beginning of the movie Pharaoh's girlfriend is walking around in what seemed to be a filmy dress with a network of dark wires or braids.  In HD DVD it becomes immediately apparent that aside from a thong and a pair of pasties she is stark naked - the dark lines are painted on, and there is no dress (or for that matter any clothing whatsoever).  The bad news is that at the end of the movie Arnold Vosloo is wearing about the same thing,  But my point is that the detail and contrast and color in this version is amazing - you feel like you're actually having a conversation with Rachel Weisz or Brendan Fraser half the time.
Bottom line is that this is a great version of a great film.  Glad I got it.

Home Theater / Study media redo

About two weeks ago my three and a half year old InFocus X1 projector's bulb burned out.  Since the cost of replacing the bulb for this 480p resolution projector I'd been using in the home theater was substantial, I'd made the decision a long time ago to use it as an excuse to upgrade the home theater to HD quality, and fix some problems with the study A/V setup at the same time.

Home Theater

Briefly, my home theater is a small room over the garage with only one tiny window which was designed from the ground up as a home theater.  It was wired for a 6.1 speaker system, including conduit for subwoofer cabling, as well as cabling to a ceiling mounted projector or a wall-hung TV.  I made a screen out of screen fabric and 1x2's that's approximately six feet wide, and have six speakers I'm very happy with.  The subwoofer, however, has always had a hum.  I got a bottom of the line Sony receiver and DVD/VCR and ran sixteen feet of component cabling to the ceiling projector, and that's been a really great setup for the past three years, although I was never able to consolidate the remotes into one (the biggest reason being that the IR signal had to go one way for the projector and another for the components, which are in a glass-fronted cabinet built into the wall).

First new purchase was a new Sony projector to replace the InFocus.  Since my budget didn't allow $3,000 minimum for a 1080p projector, I satisfied myself with 720p.  I then ran a 16 foot HDMI from the new projector to the cabinet, where I replaced the old receiver with a slightly higher-end Sony that could handle a HDMI cable.  The decision then was what to do about the DVD player.  Had to get a new one since I wanted to take advantage of HDMI, but which: existing DVD, upconverted DVD or Blue-Ray or HD DVD - or both.  Initially I got a Sony Blu-Ray and a Philips upconverter DVD.  Both would upconvert my existing DVDs to 720p.  The Sonmy, unfortunately, was unbelievably slow and froze repeatedly on both standard DVDs and Blu-Ray, so I returned it, and replaced it temporarily with the Philips, which was intended as a DVD player for the 1080p set in the family room (but where I could not get the audio to work).  (I was really impressed with the quality of the Blu-Ray picture, as well as what the new projector and upconversion did for standard DVDs - Lord of the Rings looked beyond spectacular).

A week and a half later (Saturday) I got a chance to finish the redo.  I replaced the Philips with the LG dual DVD player, which plays both DVDs and HD DVDs, and reprogrammed my Logitech remote (which I normally use in the study) to - with a little help from a IR extender - actually run everything using one remote pointing at the screen.  The key was that for some bizarre reason the new projector can get its commands when you're pointing at the screen - exactly the opposite of where it is.  So I could focus on using the extender to take the remote's signal pointing at the screen and relay it to the extender inside the component cabinet.  It took a little rearranging of the components, but now I have a backlit remote (a necessity in a pitch-black room) that will turn all the components on or of with one button.  The piece de resistance was a new subwoofer - I finally found one that was about the right size and the right price and subbed it in for Buzz.  Now, for the first time, I have good speakers, screen, picture, and sound.  And a remote that works.

The boys and I celebrated last night by watching most of Apollo 13, then Flyboys, then part of Batman Begins.  We watched part of Apollo 13 again this morning, which, including watching parts a week ago, means we've watched most of the movie three times in the last two weeks.  And it just gets better and better - and looks absolutely spectacular.

Study

There's always a trickle-down effect when you start modernizing one room's AV - in this case the old receiver went into the family room to replace the law-school era Pioneer unit, and the Sony DVD/VCR went into Grayson's room, where it replaced a unit whose DVD had quit working.

The Philips upconversion DVD went into the study to take the place of the Sony SACD that I had been using for CD, SACD and DVDs.  The allowed the video signal to the TV to be upgraded from 480p via component to 720p via HDMI, and the audio goes straight to the old Sony receiver (a twin of the old home theater receiver), where it gets the benefit of the subwoofer.  Currently the SACD outputs five channels, but that doesn't include the subwoofer.  The Philips is using RCA jacks right now but I'll be replacing that shortly with a digital coax. 

New speakers were also in order since I'd blown one of my old (1994) Boston Acoustics watching ... you guessed it, Apollo 13, earlier this year.  I got a pair of BA CR67 bookshelf speakers and moved the old BAs to back surround, where they replaced some really old Pioneers.  Potentially the un-blown will move to center rear eventually and some smaller BAs will replace them as satellite, but that really depends on how much of a load the blown speaker gets.  As long as it doesn't get asked for a lot of bass, it actually does pretty well, so I may not replace it.  This alos gives me a chance to use the new subwoofer I got for the study earlier this year.  It took me three years to find a subwoofer that would fit on a 12" deep bookcase, but I finally did, and I now have a set of speakers that, while perhaps a bit weak in the center channel, are pretty good for audio listening.

I finished the installation by reprogramming (successfully) my Logitech Harmony 670 remote to select (using just one button) watching TV (which means listening to XM via the satellite receiver) , listerning to CDs on the SACD (which, as I mentioned, means no subwoofer, so I need to work on that), or watching movies on the Philips upconversion DVD.  The twins and I finished watching Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow on it last night, and thoroughly enjoyed it, so I may have a pretty good deal here.

Where do I go from here?  Well, for the study, still need a new center speaker and maybe new satellites, and eventually a new receiver so I can get HDMI to the receiver, but that's not a high priority.  The real priority is getting a reliable enough remote that I can move the receiver to the electronics closet (which is immediately behind the TV) since the bookcase is not deep enough for it.  What's stopping me is that the audio settings on the receiver are so complex that I really need to be able to see it.  What's probably sooner is moving the TV to a wall-mount position over the fireplace.  What's stopping me is that I would want some type of frame so it doesn't look quite so modern, and I haven't exactly figured that out yet.

For the home theater, eventually it needs a 1080p source, but the difference between 720 and 1080 is realistically not something I am sure I could distinguish anyway.  What it needs right away is a remote for the light switch!

Flyboys

This was my first Blu-Ray movie - I bought it when I got the Sony two weeks ago thinking the boys might be willing to watch it.  They did, last night, and it was okay, but all it really did was remind me how good Pearl Harbor really was.  It was similar in a lot of ways, and there's nothing really bad I can say about it, and I'm glad they made a movie about the Lafayette Escadrille, but it just didn't do that much for me.

Fortunately I bought Pearl at the same time...

Tyrannosaur Canyon - Douglas Preston

Picked this up last week on a remainders table and really, really enjoyed it.  Good characters and story.  I liked it even better than Preston's book with Lincoln Child, so I may be picking up some more of these.