No, this isn’t an advertisement as such.  Both the US and UK versions of Amazon are running DVD sales, and I’m listing out my ooh-that-would-be-interesting list for my purposes (and your edification, in case you have similar interests).

Note that I have multi-region / NTSC and PAL reading DVD players in the house, and that the UK PAL stuff won’t be readable on normal US systems, and vice versa.  Personally, I hate the regions system.

UK:

• Complete Jeeves and Wooster (Fry and Laurie; I have only seen bits of this)
• The Palace (ITV drama series about an alternate royal family; we loved it and I wouldn’t mind having a cheap copy of this)
• The Chinese Detective (sounds interesting, but I really don’t know beans about it)
• Complete Gilbert and Sullivan (1982 series, I think this was done over here for PBS, and this puts back in stuff that was edited from the VHS version, which I had at one time; it was ruined in a flood – need to see if there’s a US version of this)
• Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (not for me, guys, but for future material for Mere, considering how much she loves British/Australian kids stuff)
• The Devil’s Whore (pay no attention to the title; historical fiction drama set during the English Civil War of the 1650s)
• Einstein and Eddington (historical drama around the time of WW1, and yes, that’s Albert Einstein and yes, this has Physics in it, and it looks cool.)

With a whimper: engineer shuts down WCPO’s analog TV transmitter (Cincinnati, Ohio)

Same with other Cincinnati stations: WXIX (film of the analog signal actually going out), WLWT (nice little historical signoff piece),  and also Dayton’s WHIO.

I absolutely refuse to watch the train wreck of Jon and Kate Plus Eight – haven’t for a while, and I did catch about 10 minutes of the start-of-season one before I got nauseated.   I’m hearing stories about their ratings falling apart, and I’m just as glad.

First off, while some find the whole thing of having a view as to how to handle a big family interesting, the endless TMI and yelling and snark in the show got to me.  Same things over and over again.  And now, it’s not really about ‘how to deal with all those kids’ but ‘how to deal with celebrity’.   Doesn’t help that this all crescendoed during the weeks that we’ve been dealing with NEWSWEEK folks, all of whom are fine, but you get an oh-crud feeling in the pit of your stomach that publicity can be a serious royal b**ch in so many ways.

Really, the past publicity stuff has been minor in impact.  A very very few ‘oh-yeah’ responses; otherwise, the fact that it’s in print or on video makes telling The Story easier and quicker for the unenlightened. (I tend to blather on somewhat.  Pedantic old bore and all…)  So you can say -read this, look at that, you’ll get the picture.

But after this is out, I’m pretty much done.

And no, I don’t care much for either of the adult Gosselins.    They have just gotten to be way too irritating to watch.

I recently started (with the help of Roxio’s Easy VHS to DVD) my long-awaited digital coversion efforts, starting with the VHS tapes, and have been making a lot of headway in the process.

Some of the stuff that I’m running into in the tapes are things I no longer care so much about, and those get dumped.  Others (more than I expected!) can now be procured through Netflix or other low-cost means, and those get put on the Netflix or whatever list and are dumped.  Still others are in too poor a shape to transfer, and I basically toss those with regret.

The idea is to totally eliminate the VHS tapes in the house, and have them all transferred over to digital versions.

I was off work all of last week, trying to keep my foot out of action and let it heal.  Not sure how much got accomplished on that part, but the swelling is gone, and I’ve thoroughly gotten sick to death of the Bactrim side-effects.

The podiatrist a week ago  and my family were pretty firm on the ‘Jim, you are going to stay off that *&!@ foot or else and let it heal’, and I was written up for the rest of the week off from work to that point.   So…

This doesn’t mean I was comatose, but there’s a lot that is going on.

We’ve been mooshing around what’s available via the TiVo, this that and the other, and found out that:

• Meredith really likes Sally Field, and is now at least temporarily hooked on The Flying Nun.
• Everyone gave up on Life on Mars and Ashes To Ashes as way too all-over-the-place weird and unfollowable.  As in there’s plot twists and plot twists, but GMAFB.
• We’re watching the last few remaining ER episodes more out of a sense of ‘what’s next’ than of ‘ooh, what’s next.’  Sort of watching out of a respect and duty situation as an old acquaintance dies.
• Susan and Connie are still studiously watching Ghost Whisperer and Numbers, and I’m still studiously ignoring the shows due to moronic writing and character abuse.
• They’re trying to lure me back to Criminal Minds, but I think I’ve burned out on gory cop shows.
• Stuff everyone is watching: Lie to Me, Hell’s Kitchen, Kitchen Nightmares.   Several others are on hiatus till June or later.

• The Six Flags parent company is looking at bankruptcy. Wheeeee goes the rollercoaster…
• American Axle, a big supplier of GM and Chrysler, is looking at going out of business.  Broken Axle jokes accepted at the door.
• CNBC’s Cramer The Huckster gets down with a mea culpa of sorts with Jon Stewart’s show.  I’ve seen the earlier Cramer/Stewart matchups, and it makes me very aware of why I never watch the regular CNBC programming unless something is crashing and I need to see the as-it-happens tickers.  And that’s pretty rare.
• Madoff pleads guilty with his own mea culpa, will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.  So he’ll get to do “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” as a duet with Killer and Rocky in the slam, while the rest of us do a chorus of “I got plenty of nothin’” in the background.
• You can get that shirt here, by the way.  I’d get one with my name on it, but they won’t fit me or Susan.
• Going Galt: How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away ?  And more hits in the tune of That Term Does Not Mean What You Think It Means.
• US Pension plans just discovered a $217 billion deficit.  Turns out that they invested in Wall Street, whodathunkit.
• The Bank Situation in Europe is much worse than here; they invested in all sorts of boondoggles that didn’t pay off, more than ours, and the same sort of acquisitions idiocies (big-fish-eating-littler-fish wise).
• All sorts of numbers as to how-much-world-wealth-has-been-destroyed-so-far are being tossed around.  Long ago, I asked my Mom - what happened to all the money in the Great Depression for people to all go broke?  The answer was that people were mostly only rich on paper only, and I had to research out the Great Depression to find that part out…that a lot of the money was really not there in the first place, but everyone acted like it was.  The seriously rich are still pretty much the seriously rich unless they put their money in the seriously stupid.

• The alternate history opening of 2001: A SPACE ODDYSEY
• Hans Conreid interviews Rod Serling!
• Germania (ww2) (from the movie FATHERLAND)
• History of the White Eagle (alternate Poland in medieval times)
• Japan as an ally of the Allies in World War 2 (from the excellent 2009 LOST MEMORIES)

• Abe Vigoda’s still alive and his birthday is today.
• ABC started filming a TV series based on Robert Sawyer’s FLASH FORWARD today. I expect to see Buck Hakes as a mad CERN scientist.   Maaad, I say.
  
• LJ: akirlu asks: can and do vegans lick envelopes? I assume that the glue is made from animal stuff, but…
• LJ: libertango wanted to know via ask.metafilter the answer to his weird what-was-it toy question, and he got it back in 30 minutes: “Lectron Electronic Dominoes”.  And where he could get one on Ebay.  Now, that’s service.

New story on the Pakistani-American TV exec who beheaded his wife; dude had a LONG history of mental instability and rage - the dead woman was wife #3, and she wasn’t the first one to be worked over.  This things rarely happen in a vacuum.

Evan Dorkin’s take on the death of Patrick McGoohan.  Very funny cartoon.

As we have cable here, I don’t worry much about the conversion from Analog to Digital broadcasting. However, I do have friends who will be affected, rabbit-ears and all, and this set of maps should show you what the difference will be in your area as to the range of broadcasting with digital.  Of course, I’m also one of those galoots who think that the ultimate ideal on cable broadcasting would be to have an a-la-carte set of local channels from other places, like Dayton or Sydney.

The fake West Wing opening scene and the real West Wing opening scene - er, something like that. (video)

One of my great questions: how the heck do they draw stuff  like lines *under* players on a football field or flags *under* speed skating racers on an Olympic track?  Well, the answer is: tech magic, explained here.

What I can mention is that the New Year’s Party was a good time, though a little frazzling.    I also spent a good deal of the day in the library with Rich Rostrom, who stayed over and was helping me with getting all of my stuff out of the closet under the stairs in the basement, and helping with the organization of the stuff that was in there into the garbage or the shelves.   We accomplished a lot.  I shelved some books that had gotten stuffed in boxes, and Rich was very very helpful on the organization and the heavy stuff.

One of the big items was in getting the few remaining video tapes out where something can be done about them, and ditto with the audio tapes.

There was a pile of Susan’s older stuff that I set aside for her to check out for later, a pile of blank/uncertains I can listen to quickly and pitch or copy, a pile of top priority to digitize stuff, and a last pile of pre-recordeds to see how much I still want them and if they’re available already digitized.   Lots of stuff was pitched.

The podiatrist gave me VERY good news on Wednesday; my foot is effectively healed.  I am to come back in a week to the Wound Center, partly as a followup and partly for a mold to be made of my foot for the major orthotic that they’ll build for me.  I still can’t get around without the special shoe and the orthotic may take a week or two beyond that, but it looks like I will be going back to the office sometime in January.  This is a mixed bag, but it will be very good to get out of the house more.  (I still have the handicapped permit through April, and it’s obvious that I’m waaaaaay out of shape in re getting around.)

HBO production and presently running on that network.  My take on it is that it’s a once-funny;  I have a hard time watching gangster movies because I really don’t get off on people beating and killing each other, especially if the people involved doing the beating are serious scum.   This is SOPRANOS GO BAGHDAD; it’s really pretty well done, but  not for anyone with an easily grossed-out stomach from the extreme violence.   It’s good for what it is, but what it is the life of a sociopath monster.   Three buckets of blood out of four.

*glyph of annoyance*and another*

*notice of attempt to retcon Anne of Green Gables with a made up new origin*

*Or when they retconned the USS Rittenhouse into mad Admiral Rittenhouse who wanted to rule the universe in Star Trek fiction - aaargh*

There’s been a big push here to organize the tons of CDs and DVDs in the house that are home-made - DVDs off of the TiVo, of course, are the big item, but there’s a ton of outdated software stuff around, and I’m tired of scratching for things when I need them.

All of the software is being taken out of jewel cases and the like and stuck in paper sleeve things.   Much of the really old stuff is being thrown out; I’m keeping things like Windows 95 install CDs for Just In case situations where someone else needs it.   Games are sorted into sets - totally obsolete goes out the door and into the trash, maybes are grouped together and stored in the sleeves, and the probably use ones are sleeved in a separate group.    Keeping many driver disks.  Keeping all of the old Adobe disks - even though I’m unlikely to go back in time from Adobe CS3, I still have occasional need for the old stuff.   Keeping all of the old TurboTax and Quicken disks, but they’re essentially archived.

All of the ‘inactive’ stuff is being stuck away into my deep storage, and the ‘live’ stuff will probably only take up one storage box on my shelves.

The household seems to have totally dropped out of interest in serveral TV shows that we used to be highly interested in.   HEROES, for instance, got to the ‘oh, jeeze, this is ridiculous’ level in bizarre plots. The reality shows endlessly cranked The Formula, and we got tired of that.  I dropped off of CRIMINAL MINDS, NUMBERS and GHOST WHISPERER because (to me) the characters got too silly, and the writing was getting terrible. 

Meredith is addicted to the Disney channel.  Connie can’t go on without THE VIEW and OPRAH, with side reruns of CROSSING JORDAN, MURDER SHE WROTE and MATLOCK.  ER is something we all watch, but if I can, I buzz through it with a fast forward button a lot. I find that I’m tiring of the  overworked formulas there (how many people has Neela Rasgotra had or almost had relationships with?  I’ve lost count) fast.

All of this was occasioned by the failure of the hard drive in the main living room TiVo box.  Connie and Mere had stuff set up quickly on the new one for season passes, but not me for me.   *sigh*

Lawrence Welk and his band doing ‘One Toke Over the Line’ on his show.  A new, modern spiritual, don’t ya know.

Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.