Some gems from a brilliant post by Bill Maher in the Huffington Post:

“This country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything.”

“Here’s one fun fact you can take away: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That’s right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.

“James Madison wrote that “pure democracy” doesn’t work because “there is nothing to check… an obnoxious individual.” Then, in the margins, he doodled a picture of Joe the Plumber.

“A smart guy named Chesterton once said: “My country, right or wrong is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying… It is like saying ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’ To which most Americans would respond: “Are you calling my mother a drunk?”

Excerpts From – Bill Maher: New Rule: Smart President ≠ Smart Country.

Our Grammy-award winning boys from New Zealand  have picked up 6 Emmy nominations.  These include best actor in a comedy for Jemaine Clement, as well as best comedy series, outstanding directing for a comedy series and outstanding writing for a comedy series.

Here they are from season 1:

HBO: Flight of the Conchords.

5 Tips on Proper Geek Male Maintenance

1. Hurty Brain – Hurty Brain stems from the repeated misfiring of synapses that occurs when a question is asked of a geek that is light years behind what they specialize in..

2. Geek Males need play time. Whether it’s Xbox, Warcraft, or building PC’s from parts, geek guys need time to engage in said activities. Without harassment.

3.   Watch movies he likes i.e. “Buckaroo Banzai”.

4. Buying him a present? Giftcards. Giftcards. Giftcards.

5.   Lastly, and perhaps the most challenging…engaging the geek male in conversation….

via The Squees of A Geek Girl Diva: 5 Tips on Proper Geek Male Maintenance (or How To Keep your Geek Male Running Smoothly).

Jonathan Miller is the idiot in charge of coordinating News Corp.’s efforts to find new ways to get consumers to pay for digital content generated by News Corp.’s properties — which include Fox Television, Fox News, 20th Century Fox films.

If Miller gets his way, the days of free Hulu will be over.   There would be no free content, period.  Miller wants to go backwards where they bundle up programming that you want with programming that you don’t want…

I think what works for consumers most likely — and this has to be tested, frankly — is bundles. I think you have to figure out what are the right bundles that people buy and what’s contained in that bundle.

I’ve never met Jonathan Miller, but he sounds like quite a douchebag.    Without looking him up, I’m certain he’s over 50.  And he owns a Kindle.  ‘Nuff said.

Soon, you’ll have to pay for Hulu.

One of the few channels I actually subscribe to on YouTube is Mr. Deity.  There are 10 episodes on Youtube, and each one is about 3-5 minutes long.   The web-based show is now into season 2.  I came across it a long time ago, and the creators have started a new series called “Words“.     But here’s  the first episode of Mr. Deity and the show that I got addicted to for a whole afternoon…

YouTube – Mr. Deity Episode 1: Mr. Deity and the Evil.

Diggz and Ryan talk about movies, Blip.fm, Twittering, Social Networking, and being lost at sea. Plus Diggz updates everyone on his movie projects.

CS 50: Man Overboard Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

One of my favorite television shows is/was The West Wing, created by Aaron Sorkin (who also wrote A Few Good Men, Charlie Wilson’s War and is now writing a screenplay about Facebook).   It was a very smart show…criticized at times for being too “high brow”.

That always made me snicker (and cringe)…calling a serious television drama about the inner-workings of the  White House too “high-brow” is funny (and sad) to me.   Of course, during the time of the “Bushies”, when “too high-brow” merely meant pronouncing the word nuclear correctly, The West Wing did surprisingly well and stayed on the air for 156 episodes.

It’s been conjectured (by others than myself) that Sorkin’s Deputy Chief of Staff character, Josh Lyman, is based (at least in-part) on the very real Obama Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel.

In the opening scenes of one West Wing episode that aired in 1991  (The Leadership Breakfast), Josh Lyman and Sam Seaborn  attempt to light a fire in one of the fireplaces in the White House.    As they comically discuss the finer points of how to properly light a fire (“kerosene”) and the quality of the wood (“spruce is a dry wood”),  the soon realize that fireplace’s flue’s been welded shut since 1896.  Antics ensue.

Flash forward 9 years to a young Obama Cabinet member, Peter Orszag.   This guy’s a 41-year-old Marathon-running, Princeton-taught, Marshall Scholar PHD who heads up the Obama’s Office of Management and Budget (how’s that for high brow?).   So Dr. Peter Smartypants recently moves into his office and notices some logs neatly stacked in a fireplace.    It being a brisk January morning, he decided to light a fire.  The only problem: The Secret Service had capped the building’s chimneys.  Antics ensue.

So you tell me…is this life imitating art, or is the Obama camp literally sending a smoke signal ‘hat tip’ to Aaron Sorkin?   I suppose the former, seeing as it would be taking a mere ‘hat tip’ a bit far –even by Ivy League prank standards– to get the Washington DC fire department involved.

From Season 2, Episode 5.   In  the mail today I received my tickets for the Flight of the Conchords show in Orlando in April.  I had asked for them for my birthday from my girlfriend, but realized she was way into her own selfishness to remember to buy them online, so I went ahead and bought them myself (you know…just in case).

Good thing I did…cuz guess what?   She forgot all about it!   It’s almost like I could predict the future!

Not really…she was just was predictable.   And now she’s single, boys…so now she can forget YOUR birthday too!!!!!!   And as a bonus you get the pathological lying, disgusting hygiene, creepy cat love and her holier-than-thou righteousness!    Within weeks she will make you too feel as important as her cat’s ass dingleberries. Or maybe she’ll try to get with your brother. Or she’ll sleep with your bandmate. Or maybe she’ll marry you and then cheat on you a month later… All this and more could be yours!!!!

YouTube – [HQ] Flight of the Conchords – Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor.

This February 3rd marks the 50th anniversary of the “day the music died”.   I noted this on my Facebook status, stating that I was going to honor the date by memorizing the lyrics to “American Pie” by Madonna.

Several of my attentive friends were quick to point out that the Don Mclean version was better…I’m pretty sure that most of them knew I was kidding about the song being by Madonna (although you never know!).

In the process, my old Vineyard friend Mark Dillon mentioned a Brady Bunch version of “American Pie”, which I hadn’t heard….but thanks to the Internets, it’s now indelibly burned into my brain.

After a 10 second piano intro, the song inexplicably starts with the “Helter Skelter” verse and continues to the “Satan laughing with delight” verse, but completely edits out ALL of the other verses.  That’s right…no “A long, long time ago…”,  or “Did you write the book of love”, or even “I knew a girl who sang the blues”…perhaps they were left out because all of those verses have some reference to God (were the Brady’s Atheists?)

Complete with a power horn section, signature Brady harmonies and a mix that puts Greg’s baritone voice right out front, it is surely a wonder how this version never took off.  Perhaps if it had, Madonna would have never felt the need to make her own cover.  (As a side note, I think Madonna’s version is pretty much a reverse edit of the Brady version…perhaps I’ll dive deeper into that in the next few days).

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “American Pie”, by Marsha, Jan, Cindy, Greg, Peter and Bobby….

YouTube – 70′s Music: “American Pie” – The Brady Bunch.

I’ve had a dream. It’s not as cool as racial equality for all…more of a selfish dream.

My dream, as Joey from “Friends” put it so nicely, was to have “a television that comes as if from nowhere!”

Well, my friends, the dream is alive.

That’s right, my home theater system has completed its stage 2 upgrade. Out with the noisy hot plasma screen, and in with the digital projector system!

I began the journey last March when I decided to free myself from the bounds of traditional satellite television (I had already given up on cable TV back in the early part of the century). I called up DISH Network and told them I wanted no more part of their funny business. “How will you get your news? How will you find out the weather?” the woman on the phone asked. To her credit, she did seem genuinely concerned with my television welfare.

“I guess I’m gonna have to wing it”, I answered.

Armed only with the Internet, I was suddenly free of the bounds of traditional television viewing. When you’re stuck in the TV world, you think differently. They use terms like HDTV. Best Buy is a place where you pick out the centerpiece of your living room. No longer for me.

I was going digital projector all over their asses.

I didn’t really have a specific design in mind, but I knew what the basic components were going to be:

1. A Digital Projector
2. Some sort of Source Media Box wired to the Internet
3. Surround Sound Audio

I had previously invested and pre-wired my house for 5.1 Audio.  Despite the fact they have 7.1 now, I really think we’re getting to the point of diminishing returns on additional channels of audio.  Can you brain really detect sound coming from 7 different sources better than 5?   It seemed like an expensive upgrade so I kept my existing Sony STR DE-885 receiver.

That’s actually where I started:  the audio.  The DE-885 receiver has S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interconnect Format) inputs, so I wanted my media box to have audio OUT that supported this digital format.

Diggz HTPC Project - Screen Up

Next, I looked at digital projectors.   The key here, I discovered, is NOT to look at any projector that is marketed as a “Home Theater” projector.  That seems to add about $1000 to the price of the projector.  Do yourself a favor and skip that section at Best Buy and head over to the “Business” projectors.

These are typically a little smaller, and certainly cheaper than their home theater brothers, and they usually have the same technology inside.  This is an area where you can save some money if you look hard enough and really make some tough decisions about your viewing needs.

Here’s the thing about High-Definition:  there are many, many factors that contribute to the end result of the image that you end up seeing on a screen…any screen.  It depends on:

• What format the original footage was shot on?
• What compression was used to output the master?
• What compression was used to output the signal?
• What resolution formats your media box supports?
• What resolution formats your television/monitor/projector supports
• How you have things configured

I GUARANTEE you that MOST people who have HD Televisions, MOST OF THE TIME, are NOT watching true HD-Format content.

I went with a lower-end projector, in my case I got a really good deal on an open-box item at Circuit City, the  Optoma EP721 Projector.

I liked it because it has DVI input, a small footprint, and it was on sale.  At 2200 Lumens it’s not the brightest projector in the world, but it’s not bad. It’s a little noisy, but it’s hanging far enough overhead that I don’t notice it. It supports HD formats, but not the HIGHEST formats. Basically it does the trick for me, and I got a $600 projector for about $400.

Diggz HTPC Project - Screen DOWN

Two of the more important factors that I think many people discount when looking at projector specifications are what you’re projecting ON, and what your source is.

Which brings me to the source media box.

On a whim (actually the whim part was that I bought it at Best Buy because they had them in stock, when in reality I had already been looking at them online), I bought a Dell Studio Hybrid PC.

Basically this is a Notebook without the notebook case or keyboard.  Like a notebook, it has an external power supply, internal WIFI (supports up to N).  For audio it supports S/PDIF out and has BOTH HDMI and DVI Video out.    Plus it looks pretty cool, and it’s SUPER QUIET.

The Dell Hybrid is not without it’s flaws, and I may make another post just about it, but two of the biggest flaws were that its built-in DVD decoder is broken (but there’s a workaround) and you can’t use both the HDMI and DVI outputs at the same time.

This second flaw was a major setback because part of my dream was to have a second screen that I could use when I didn’t necessarily want to use the projector.  This saves bulb life and makes it so you can surf the internet while watching a movie (I love looking up trivia on IMDB).  When I had the projector plugged into the HDMI port via an HDMI-to-DVI cable, it worked fine.  But then I tried plugging in a second monitor into the DVI port, the HDMI port was disabled.  ARGH!

Reverse View: Projector and 2nd Monitor

The workaround for that was to get an external USB HDMI Video card.   I bought this one from Cool Drives.  It works fairly well.

Once I had my two monitors (well, 1 monitor, and 1 projector) working,  I needed a screen.   My walls are textured, and oatmeal colored, and my dream was to have a television that comes as if from nowhere, afterall.

I picked a FocuPix screen. I sort of lucked out in this area because it was on sale and the dimensions were almost perfect for the image size my projector was throwing.

I think it’s really important that I configured and mounted the projector FIRST, and then picked out a screen. This allowed me to get a screen that fit the image I had.

I hung the screen on the wall (with a little help from Handyman Ed), and bought some curtains from Target to create a valence that hides the unit from view. When the screen is rolled up, you can’t see it’s there.

My next step is improving the control system. The Dell Hybrid came with a wireless keyboard and mouse that work fairly well. But there’s a remote for the screen, and the projector…plus the lights need dimming. I’m looking at X-10 solutions for controlling the lights.

The real dream is to press one button and have the lights dim, the screen drop, the projector come on and my Hulu.com queue loaded up.

Almost there