"PEAK" a blog premiere flick

Amy and I strapped a dv camera on the front of the Cog Railway at Pikes Peak and filmed the entire hour plus ride to the top of Pikes Peak in one take. It's an hour ride in 4 minutes. If you are dizzy or get motion sickness, you may not want to watch. Mucho Props to our other crew, Bob, the train engineer who helped us build a mount with an Altoids can and a paper towel. And Jeremy from Kileen, TX who sat next to us and helped us out. Without further adieu...PEAK.

Gorgeday

Well Monday was Amy's birthday and for her surprise we went to Canon City and took the Royal Gorge Train all through the mountains of Colorado and under the Royal Gorge Bridge, the largest suspension bridge in the world. On the train ride we had lunch and then took to the open air car where we saw a real live in the wild Black Bear looking for food on a nearby ledge. That sent the train into a frenzy on the return trip, cause no one was really concerned about scenery anymore, it was all about the bears. It was really the highlight of the trip and easily the best train ride we've ever had.

Next we went to the Royal Gorge bridge and walked across. Amy was quite nervous which I felt was odd since she loves roller coasters and I don't at all. To cap off our trip we drove in the mountains to Cripple Creek to do some Casino games. I didn't lose more than 20 bucks. I think the most I won was $10. We left there at 11pm and it actually got really cold and rainy on us. The drive back which we thought would be all highway turned out to be an hour drive in the pitch black mountains with rain. We were so nervous driving that we took turns. Tuesday we got up and drove from 9am to 11pm back to Texas. I had a great time with Amy celebrating her birthday, it was the most relaxing and fulfilling trip in a long time. And best of all it was with my girl!

Check out all the new photos that Amy added to the gallery:

CLICK HERE!

Come back to the Blog premiere of our vacation video about Pike's Peak called, "PEAK" !

14,110 Feet

Not much time to blog, since we have to get up early for Amy's birthday surprise trip. Here is the link for some new photos that we took on the way to the top of Pikes Peak. By the way when you click on the photo gallery now, be aware that there are quite a few photos so be sure and click above the photo for page 1, 2, 3, etc.

CLICK HERE!

Arcades, Caves, and Corgis

Word from CO again. We are having a blast in Manitou Springs. Yesterday we got up played some basketball. Amy made 15 shots in a row! Impressive. I was hitting from long range pretty well, but I am quite rusty. Broke in a virgin ball that my cousins gave me for a wedding gift. NBA regulation ball too. Anyway we went to eat at a place on the river for lunch and had an open faced turkey sandwich with brown gravy. Then we walked the shops of Manitou Springs and found the most awesome arcade we have ever seen. It's about 5 or 6 different buildings with games from the 40's all the way up to present day. They even had those deals where you put in a penny or a nickel and watch index cards with photos on them flip by as you crank them. We played the original Asteroids, Donkey Kong, and Tron. We also witnessed some bad ass folk drumming at the local music festival. I took this on my cell phone for all of you to jam to:



Next we took a drive up a very large mountain with no guard rails and at the top we explored The Cave of the Winds. The cave itself is pretty worn out and small, but it was a nice 50 degrees in there. Amy found a Corgi dog she liked tied up to the bleachers, and since we could not take him we ended up at Petsmart later so Amy could see some cats. We then went to Old Colorado City and walked around for a while before eating dinner at the Mason Jar. (A kind of Cracker Barrel type place.) I thought food here would be pricey but so far its not bad at all. We drove over to Colorado Springs so Amy could buy a non headache inducing pillow. We then returned to Old Colorado City so I could get my annual vacation chocolate covered frozen banana at a chocolate shop.

Everyone here is very friendly. There are dogs everywhere. It seems like dogs are more prevalent than children here. The weather is great. We have not had to turn on the AC at all. Its cool in the mornings around 50ish. Today we take the cog Railway to Pikes Peak, and tomorrow is Amy's birthday surprise trip. Here is the link again for more updated photos:

CLICK HERE FOR MORE PHOTOS!!!

Howdy from Colorado !

Yo everyone. We are having a blast in Colorado. We went out last night and ate Wendy's at the Garden of the Gods at sunset. Really beautiful. Amy and I shot some incredible photos. Today we are going to downtown Manitou Springs to peruse the shops and gallerys. Then we are going Cave exploring at the Cave of the Winds. I have set up a new web gallery of all the photos we are taking. It makes things much faster than posting on the blog page here. So click below where it says CLICK HERE.

CLICK HERE. CLICK HERE. CLICK HERE.

Amarillo by Morning

They took my saddle in Houston, broke my leg in Santa Fe. Lost my wife and a girlfriend somewhere along the way. It's been a busy trip.

Here are some pics from our morning in Amarillo. We got in last night around midnight, and got up early to eat at the Big Texan, which seems to be the main attraction in town. If you haven't heard of it before, it's the home of the 72oz steak dinner, which is free if you finish it in under 1 hour. There's even a raised area in the middle of the restaurant with a table and a digital clock, so everyone can watch as you attempt to finish your mammoth steak (including baked potato, salad, dinner roll and shrimp cocktail). We settled for the breakfast buffet, which was just as impressive.

After our scrumptious breakfast, we practiced our shooting skills, and checked out the rest of the place. Erik was quite the sharpshooter. I held my own. I rang some bells, and knocked down some cans. It was a proud moment.

Amarillo was fun, but Colorado was calling. Let's get this vacation started.

by special guest blogger, Amy of the Short Ones

F___ Michael Bay

Now he changed his mind. I guess he is the anti-christ after all. Read HERE.

I Love Michael Bay ?

Today is a great example of how the geek wars of gadgetry bring people together when it seemed to rip them apart. Recently it appeared the battle of the High Definition War was coming to a close and the victor was clearly Blu-Ray discs. The sales stats were there, even the president of Universal who is the only supporter of HD-DVD exclusively said that the HDdvd format is fragile and that if he pulled support from it, it would die.

A few weeks, maybe a month or so ago Paramount home Entertainment came forth and said that Blu-Ray is the way to go, and that they were turning all their attention to the blu format because it could hold all their content on one disc including the extras in HD. They explained that HD-DVD was not able to do this. Yesterday Microsoft (aka Satan) who backs HD-DVD slid a nice 150 million dollar check into the pockets of Paramount execs to drop Blu-ray for what we now know is for 18 months. They announced yesterday they were going all HD-DVD.

However, here is the kicker. There was an asterisk on this deal. This deal includes all Paramount titles except those directed by Steven Spielberg. He did not agree with the move. So none of his movies will be available on HD-DVD. (he is in fact working on his first Blu-Ray release of Close Encounters!) Then late yesterday in a counter move Fox came out in total support of Blu-ray. Crazy. I'm not so mad so much about the payola Paramount received because I'm sure that happens everywhere, and I'm sure Blu does the same thing. What pisses me off is that I had several Blu-ray Paramount releases in my Netflix queue and now they are gone. Its just really corporate greed when you see just a few weeks back a company say how much better the technology and sales have been for Blu-Ray, then next week say the opposite in favor of a measly 150 million which is nothing for Paramount. This is really a slap in the face of movie lovers and hard working people. But thats business and sadly I'll have to question paying for any Paramount releases for a while.

On to the title of this post. This morning I logged on to Blu-Ray.com and low and behold the director of The Transformers (big summer flick from paramount and Spielberg) said he is so pissed at Paramount about dropping Blu-Ray that he will not direct Transformers 2. He was probably working hard on the extras for the Blu-Ray release which was announced, and got pissed off. So I am now pleased that he and Steven are standing up for this act of corporate greed. It makes Paramount look really sad and the HD-DVD/Microsft camp look even sadder. Michael my son, you may have atoned for your cinematic sins today. But really other than Hotmail, what good or innovative has Microsoft given us in the last 15 years?

Classic Lil Penny commercial

Penny Hardaway is coming back to the NBA to play with his ex Orlando teammate Shaq. I found this classic commercial on Deadspin.com...

Samurai: Winds of Justice

Funny short about Samurai from the classic Super Friends show....

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

I had never seen this before, but what a real gem. It's been playing on HDNET recently and is a treat in black and white HD. I can't recommend it enough. Amazing cast. A really challenging film about this world's darkest time of WWII.

My New Hero, Kige Ramsay

Edgar Wright interviews the Superbad cast.

Director Edgar Wright of Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, and Hot Fuzz interviews the Superbad cast. You must watch this!

Bush Zombies

I saw this on Attack of the Show last night. I thought it was genius...

The Blu-ray Experience

I have wanted to write this article for a while now, but I have been patiently waiting things out a bit to see how things were going to play out in the High Definition DVD world. On the one hand I was a little concerned that by the time the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD war had settled that some miracle device would come out that would offer 50GB downloads right to my dvr that would eliminate the need for discs at all. (much like music and standard definition movies are now) Well, besides Apple TV which is dangerously close, nothing in direct HD downloads is really happening. So I decided instead of watching my movies in standard definition DVD and upconverting them to fool myself into thinking they looked HD, I decided to take the plunge. I decided to go with Blu-Ray over HD-DVD. Here are some of the reasons for that decision:

Blu-Ray has every major Hollywood studio supporting it except Universal, which is exclusive to HD-DVD. That sucks for all those great Uni titles, like Deer Hunter, Big Lebowski, etc. that I can't get my mitts on. But Blu-ray is picking up more studios than HD DVD by an alarming number.

Blu has the capacity to hold 50GB on each disc. (and can someday go up to 250GB) HD-DVD can only do 30GB. (Even though in 2005 they promised up to 45GB) What does this mean to you? With 30GB you can have enough disc space to make a beautiful HD transfer, but with 50GB, you can make an even better one. So if you're going to spend the money go for Blu, and take advantage of the extra space. This also means you can but two or 3 HD-DVD transfers on one Blu-Ray. That's pretty cool folks.



So picture quality wise what's the difference? Not much really? In fact a lot of times the HD-DVD transfer and the Blu transfer are identical, using the same exact codecs for the transfers. But here is where it gets interesting. See studios like Paramount for instance started doing stronger transfer for Blu-Ray so that they can use the extra storage capacity of the disc for the transfer. They also are now going all HD with the extras on the dvd as well. On HD-DVD, most if not all of your extras will be in regular old standard def because after putting the movie down on the disc, there is not enough room to put extras in HD.

Movie titles: Slight edge goes to Blu-Ray because they have more studio support. Disney and Sony don't go Blu. Warner is neutral and have the biggest stake in the hiDef disc market because of that. Like I said before I am pretty content with the selection of Blu-ray discs. There are a few Universal titles I would like to have, but they will come in time.

Sales of Blu-ray have exceeded HD-DVD all year. And a good example is the movie 300. It came out last week on all 3 formats, dvd, hd-dvd, and blu-ray. 250,000 hi-def dvd's were sold. 168,000 of those were Blu-ray. And the bad news for HD-DVD peeps, is that the 300 HD-DVD had more interactive features than the Blu-Ray, yet Blu-ray won. In fact HD-DVD was sure that this would end the war. Not so much. Other things to consider... Blockbuster and Target are going all Blu now. Overall sales are 2 to 1 in favor of Blu-ray all year.



Price: What everyone cares about. HD-DVD players are cheaper. Sad but True. You can get an HD DVD Player for fewer than 200 buckaroos now if you look around hard enough. Blu-Ray players started at over 1000. But they have gone down to 450. Sony and Samsung both have players at 400-450 now. I got a Samsung first gen player on clearance for 450 in March I believe at Best Buy. The coolest thing about it is that it’s an excellent up converting regular dvd player. It does almost make your old DVD’s look like high def. It does a much better job than my pricey Oppo player I bought not long b4 the Samsung Blu. In fact this Blu-Ray player was 500 bucks cheaper than my uncle's new standard def DVD player from Pioneer Elite, and has the exact same upconverting chip in it. Sorry Earl... So if your going to spend say 250 or 300 on an HD-DVD player, spend a tad more and get something classier. Now the movies themselves are about the same to buy. 20 bucks at the low end and 40 on the high end. However I have found that Frys Electronics sells Blu-Ray really cheap. I don't know why but a $40 title on it's release day is about 25 bucks. And every weekend they have a 12.99 sale on about 5 Blu-rays. You can't beat that. And also if you buy a new Blu-Ray machine now you get 5 free movies to start you out.

(NOTE: To Harry at Ain't it Cool News... You misreported in your article saying why you went with HD-DVD over Blu-Ray was because you can't play regular dvd's on a blu-ray machine. WRONG WRONG WRONG. That is retarded and totally untrue. You should do some research before you talk tech fat man. Stick to movie reviews, not that you do that much anymore either. Pet Peeve)

So what do the movies look like in 1080p. Total greatness. If you have ever watched a movie in HD from say digital cable or satellite in 1080 i, you notice some ghosting and maybe some digital grain we will call it. That is gone in Blu-ray. Even if you walk right up with the screen at your nose, it looks crisp. Better than film in some cases. As my Dad says "sharp as a tack". It is really fun watching old movies in this format. I've seen Superman: The Movie probably 50 times in my life and I saw stuff in the background I had never seen before. And not just trivial stuff, but things that really add to the story and experience. For example we had Kung-Fu Night a few months back and we watched Curse of the Golden Flower. The colors in that film were unreal. Never have I seen that deep range of colors on any TV screen. It was jaw dropping, and everyone in the room mentioned it at least twice. (Curse is only available on Blu-Ray...)

Sound: Here is a downside at least with the player I got. It says it supports your old sound system like DTS, and Dolby Digital. Well it does not exactly. For whatever reason on this player the DD signal is converted to Dolby Pro Logic (so 90's) but on your new Blu-Ray movies you can do PCM uncompressed sound which is very cool. At first it took my ears a while to really appreciate 5.1 uncompressed sound, because I am so used to the loud ass Dolby Digital or DTS. But now I kind of like it subtle nature. I'm not sure if HD-DVD's do uncompressed soundtracks or not. It takes up a lot of space but with Blu-ray you have room for that, DD, and DTS. Pretty amazing.



I have about 15 Blu-ray movies now. Some new, some older movies. If you are worried about your Netflix subscription being sad after you go Blu, don't be. All you do is go on the site and tell them you have Blu, and presto on your Queue you can select regular dvd or Blu-Ray next to your titles. (if available) I'd be glad to show anyone a Blu-ray demo if you let me know. The most impressive disc to me so far is The Descent. A movie I originally watched in Standard def then found a used copy at Movie Trading Co for a good deal. Wow. The picture transfer uses the full 50GB capacity of Blu-Ray. It's nothing short of remarkable in its detail. Considering it's a movie all in a cave that's saying something. Then the bonus features can run on top of the movie as its playing. So for instance say you are watching a scene that is pretty crazy, and your thinking how the hell did they do that? You hit a button and boom a picture in picture comes up that shows the making of that scene as it was being filmed in perfect unison with the movie you are watching. Geekasim. I believe this is all done using Java.

They have not enabled it yet, but in the future you will be able to hook up your player to your network and update the disc with new bonus features or updated interviews, commentary, and stuff like that via the web. I like that idea a lot. It makes the disc have a bit more after value instead of having to buy a new edition.

If you don't have HDTV yet, I would recommend you get one with 1080p capability and at least 2 HDMI ports. That way when you do get Blu-Ray or sigh, HD-DVD you will be set to full experience this new format. But please go Blu! There was a new story the other day about some guys that broke into a video store and stole nothing but the Blu-ray Rack of dvd's...nice.

Here are some titles that are coming out on Blu-ray that I can't wait for: Dawn of the Dead, Evil Dead 1 and 2, Halloween, Day of the Dead, The Shining, 2001, Eyes Wide Shut, and Blade Runner, all three Spiderman movies.

Here are some cool Blu-ray sights to check out:

blu-ray.com

high def digest

hollywood in high def