Shropshire Slasher

Hope you don't mind a little self congratulation. I need a little morale boost these days. Cheers, SS

Well, like every husband/father of 3, I spend my holiday season planning my new years resolutions. And like every such person, that usually involves promising to get into shape and drop some weight. Well, this year I had some success in that area. Since Christmas of this year I have lost 41 lbs. Now, I couldn't believe that I had that much to lose. But you know those days, where you step on the scale and instead of it reading your weight it shows you a number closer to the national debt? Well, I had one of those last December. So, through a combination of diet and exercise, I managed to steadily shed some pounds. Well, ok. I had a little help. My wife told me in Mid-February she wanted to divorce me. That stress probably accelerated things a bit. A couple of weeks ago, I bought a Bowflex Extreme 2. I've been working out on that every other day, and am having a good time doing it. My goal now is to get down to 155lbs, and keep working out on the Bowflex. Not looking to get huge, just want to get some tone and work out a little frustration now and again. SS

I'm still planning on golf. Dunno at this point about Cedar Point. My life is in flux a bit right now... gotta see how finances/children play out by then.

Next week I'll be in Denver, CO for the American Physical Society March Meeting. It's an annual bore-a-thon with 5000+ condensed matter physicists descending on some poor, unsuspecting major metropolitan area and single handedly driving the local economy into the crapper. Case in point: Las Vegas actually told us NOT to come back. So many prostitutes and black-jack dealers went hungry that week. Anywho... Whenever I travel, I like to get the low-down from locals. So, if you live or have lived in Denver and wanna give me advice as to what to do, see and eat when in Rome... Please feel free to post up here. Major Topics for discussion: What to see? local sites, attractions, points of historical interest, scenic overlooks, etc. Also, insider scoop on when to go or how to get there are welcome. Where to eat/drink. If you have a favorite place or places, please let me know. Pizza, chinese, Thai... whetever, I eat it all. Also, I try for one "fancy" restaurant when I travel. So, if there is a nicer type place, maybe a little more modern/cutting edge that you know of or have eaten at... I'll take the tips. But in all of this, local favorites are always worth mentioning. Looking forward to the trip, am looking forward to seeing mountains up close for the first time (don't laugh) Cheers, SS

by my reckoning, there are 6 FF'ers currently signed up from MI. Let's get this updated! Let the record show! http://www.fragfestohio.com/index.shtml

Nope hes holding THX's hand I'd be curious to know more about the history here... How you all met... what prompted you to start up FF... who went to the early ones that we don't see pictured...

When I was a kid, boot=puke. As in, "man, I just booted all over your floor." So, yeah. If I drink that whole mug, I prolly will Das Boot all over the place. Not that that would necessarily stop me... muahahahaha*cough**cough*hahaha

Perhaps a nice beef log? I'll see what I can arrange on the jerky. Heh... i just had a flashback to tommy boy (the movie) with david spade knocking on the hotel room door: "room service. You want beef jerky?" "WHAT KIND OF HOTEL IS THIS?!"

Good to know. Though the details page has a linkee to make a reservation.

So the attendees list is filling up fast. Seems like we might be ahead of last year at this time. True? Or just my imagination...

So I clicked the linkee on the FF page, and get an error when I search for rooms. So I called the 800 number and the guy there got an error when searching under the FF group rate. Anyways, I made a reservation at the AAA rate, which wasn't that bad, so I have a room. But, I wondered if other people are having problems. Also, if the FF group rate is cheaper (and comes with breakfast tickets iir) I might want to convert my res into the FF rate. SS

Depending on the timing, I'd consider a trip to Cedar Point. You can put me down with the ??? above. Hoping to arrive sometime on Wednesday.

Sign me up for the whole enchilada. I'm planning on making it down wednesday this year, so I don't have to leave at 4AM Thursday for the 18 cans of beer... i mean... holes of golf. That got rough about 6pm. SS

Liked the new lost temple from customs. Should we throw it in the rotation for a while? P.S. Customs fun as usual Ice. GG. SS

RE: rescaling The new 1080p sets are actually 1080 vertical pixels, and my therefore display 1080i or 1080p signals without rescaling. all other sets will have some different number of lines (some are actually 720, some are the afore mentioned 736, some are other variations of 7XX). These sets all require some rescaling, regardless of the input signal. Hence the importance of the onboard electronics of the set. re: sources There is no generalization about what your source resolution is. As far as I know, there is no TV source (broadcast, cable, sat) that sends in 1080p yet. For original programming, you get either 1080i or 720p from the stations (most tv shows are i believe 1080i, as is CBS sports, while abc/espn sports originate in 720p). Now, that is what the STATION is sending. Now you have the transmission to consider. Local affiliates, directTV, dish, comcast, etc. have to select a format for sending to your screen. They may opt only for 1080i, in which case some programming is upscaled. Or, the transmission could be sent in the programs native format, which would require no scaling at the station. Now, your tuner. If you have a sat/cable box, it must get that signal, and send it to the set. In my case, I have a Samsung HD sat tuner. It requires me to set an output res based on TV set. Mine is 1080i. IF the set receives a 720p input, there is a rescale here. Some newer boxes have a "passthrough" setting, which I believe forces the box to dump the output to the TV at whatever the source station is sending. from my reading, this is the desired choice. FInally, there is the TV scaling mentioned above. So, there are lots of places that rescaling can happen. The quality of the scaling engines at each stage will affect image quality. As a science type guy, I would be willing to be that there is no such thing as "perfect" rescaling. That is, there will be some loss of image quality for any rescale. The question is, how much does it affect final PQ. I would also be willing to bet that we will see an ultimate convergence on 1080p for all sources/playback devices (cameras, stations, sat/cable, boxes, tv's). But I also be that is 10+ years away. CEM Not just plasmas. There are many rear projection and a handfull of new LCD's that do 1080p native. But, you will pay dearly for the LCD's, less so for the RP. Only HD-DVD and Blue-ray are 1080p sources ATM, AFAIK.

Shepster: I'm not a TV guru, but I read up now and again when i'm considering a purchase. Personally, i wouldn't get a plasma anymore. For a number of reasons, I think the advantages of either rear projection or LCD make plasma a soon to be obsolete tech. I've even read spec that plasma's days are numbered in the market (dunno if that means 3 years or 10). my current feeling is, if you have all the money in the world to burn, you should get a new Sony 1080p LCD set (XBR2 or XBR3) in a >40" size. These start at close to 4K. If you want something more affordable, you can look at the various 720p sets. I've got a new 32" XBR2 720p LCD from Sony. Love it. Cost about half of the 1080p sets, and since it is a smaller set, and I view it from much closer than one typically would with those bigger sets, it is excellent. It has amazing black levels, quick refresh, huge contrast and color saturation. Overall, I'd say I'm in love with this set. Huge upgrade from my 30" samsung tube HD set. If you want to go less expensive still, Sony and others make 32" sets (the sony has an "S" designation) with different electronics that are also nice (realizing that it isn't just the panel that makes a nice LCD, but also the electonics that drive it; i've always felt this is where sony has excelled of late). If you want best bang for buck, I still feel that the rear projection models from sony and some of the DLP sets are really amazing pictures. It's the cheapest way to go 1080p, and the brightness/black levels of some of these sets are really amazing. Plus, they tend to exhibit less blocking and other artifacting than the LCDs. If you want to go bigger, this is a cost effective way to do it. Of course, all that really matters is what your eyes see. See them in person and watch. when the sales people aren't looking set all the sets to similar color settings. play around with the picture. If it looks good to you then it probably is. My little bro bought a Sam's club set (Vizio?) a year ago and loves it. Only paid like $800. just my $.02 CEM

Got new cookware (all-clad). I know, sounds funny. But, it was what I wanted!

Thanks much all. Had a good day with the wife. Kids are at their aunts for the day, which was sad on the one hand, but on the other hand... and... for my birthday present, I ended up with the 32" Sony XBR2 LCD TV I've been eying since fall. Don't know if I coulda persuaded the wife on any other day. Course, i probably just cashed in several birthdays, father's days, Christmases... etc. Cheers all...

That shape 4 pin is what I've always known as mini 1394. But then again, I've never seen a 9-pin like the honker in your pic. CEM

Well, I'm 33 (34 in a few days). I BARELY remember when this aired. It aired once, George Lucas denied having anything to do with it (though is artistic credibility is on shaky ground nowadays). It was a shoddy attempt to cash in on the popularity of the movie in a day before DVD, video games, etc. not that they didn't try with toys, books, records, tshirts...

Or I can find you a lazytown gif for your avatar. Heh... Lazytown. <shudder>

Yeah, he was 10-1 before the bit I recorded. then he left in a hurry (I think he knew we were questioning him). Think of this demo as a snippet of a longer pattern. notice that when he has knife or pistol out the jitter is there. When he pulls our a grenade it goes away. Others with more experience than I have comments on this demo?

oh so true but they are watching over all of us so beware! Technically my error was spelling, not grammar.

Perhaps we could increase forum traffic with a little proper grammer grammar? hmmm? Perhaps? You are = You're. As in, " You're all boring". Grammer Grammar counts people. SS The grammer grammar police.

K... compressed it in winrar, still got a file extension error from forums when i uploaded. I renamed it .zip (I know Berg, I read what you said). now it is attached. After all this please take a look. I don't normally accuse people of hacking, and agree with the server policy of not doing so in game. In fact, as you watch this demo, you'll see me admonishing people in the game to stop accusing this guy. (Plus I had the demo going and wanted to catch him). I wouldn't be going through all this trouble if I wasn't convinced that what is happening on his screen is because of some "hax". I'll let you all decide if you agree. My description above still stands. CEM ninjax.zip