Weekend thus far

Not really much to post about the weekend thus far, I mean how many "I got, up, went to Forest Hills Foods to procure the fixings for today's steak dinner, came home, rode the e-bike" posts do you all have the stomach to read!!???!!!!

Anyway, "I got up around 9AM, went to Forest Hills Foods to procure the fixings for today's steak dinner, came home, and" did not ride the e-bike....yet! Will be doing that around 11AM so the kids get a chance to stay asleep as we wee up late, Danielle up until 11:45, and Scott and I until around 1AM.

The weather today is GORGEOUS, sunny, blue sky, breezy, around 70 right now with low humidity, which will prevail for the next couple of days; it was quite muggy Friday and Saturday. The day just begs for me to....Cook With Fire!

Last night the kids and I watched Cloverfield off of DVD that my friend Brian lent us. Speaking of Brian that reminded me I forgot on the Scott driving test post to mention that I headed over to the X's when she called to tell me Scott passed where I began preparations for dinner which she invited me to. I do enjoy when the five of us, as my son Chris was there, can eat dinner and simulate a family. That not withstanding, she sprung for steaks!

Anyway back to the movie. I must admit that the trailers on TV do not do this flick justice, and even with the jerky home movie style photography it is an excellent movie, with a decent plot and plenty of drama and action. Even the seemingly bore first 15 minutes of so, which at the time hardly seemed necessary, served to acquaint us with the main characters and understand the relationships between them. I highly recommend this movie! Now for a spoiler....the butler did it!

Christopher headed back to school yesterday; I hope he got settled he is not staying in the dorms in this, the beginning of his sophomore year, but with several others in a rented apartment close to the school. We don't even know if they readily have an Internet connection though the apartments are affiliated with the college. It will be an interesting time for Chris, more freedom and more responsibility; last year on campus he was paying for board so he got three square meals a day down in the school cafeteria, now it will be procure, create, and clean up after your own meals. I will really miss his by-weekly visits for out Sci-Fi watching!

Speaking of Sci-Fi last night heralded the start of the new season of Stargate Atlantis, plus repeats, starting with the premier episode, of a show I had never seen called Joan of Arcadia on the Sci-Fi channel which I have yet to watch, though I recorded it.

The Sci-Fi channel also began repeating a show called Jeremiah, a show starting (of all people!) Luke Perry and Theo from the Cosby show. A very gritty look at what happens after the end of the world, and, surprising good! After being type cast as Theo, Malcolm-Jamal Warner does a very good job portraying Jeremiah's (played by Luke Perry) street wise sidekick.

I just sent the X an e-mail inviting her for dinner later if she can make it; she had a rough weekend having to stay overnight because of the distance of her appointments from here. She unfolded a tale of horror film like proportions of being so far off the beaten path with dark, deserted foggy forests and a bizarre 'motel-hell' like motel stay in the middle of no where......so...I figured she can use a nice dinner. We'll see if she is able to attend, if she does not we'll just cut the extra steak into threes!

Footnote: I think I broke my own record for number of labels on this post.

Star Trek TOS - Season One HD-DVD Review

I recently procured the first season of Star Trek The Original Series (TOS) on HD-DVD. All four seasons will eventually be available this way.

It's amazing what they have done here; they took each episode using the original film and then restored each frame. The color and clarity is simply amazing, just too incredible to describe. side by side comparisons available on the DVD show just how effective they were here. They also re-recorded the orchestra music to provide higher quality.

THEN, while staying true to the original content they replaced all the old optical effects with state of the art CGI. It is incredible! Shots of planets and such which originally were painted balls look fantastic as does the enterprise and other ships and such. Existing effects in live actions shots are enhanced or added where missing, it is just fantastic.

Some episodes have what they call "Starfleet Access" where a series of icons is displayed on the screen to the right of the picture. These can be life form or science/device specific and clicking on them pops open a box with specific information on the highlighted items. For example the first time a Romulan is displayed, there is more detailed information.

There are also comments and other content related to the episode. When you activate this icon the current screen is shrunk down a bit and shifted to the left side of your screen and the new info pops up. This content is fantastic, anything from original footage showed side-by-side with the new footage, little known facts, and lots of other information from various people.

I've watched about a third of the episodes, and it is almost like rediscovering Star Trek. They went to great pains to preserve the spirit of the original, such as in the opening which is all redone, but the Enterprise movements across the screen, the star movement and patterns, have all been painstakingly duplicated.

There are also tons of extras available outside the episodes themselves, such as Billy Blackburn's Treasure Chest: Rare home movies and special memories, Spacelift: Transporting Trek into the 21st century featurette, Interactive Enterprise inspection where you can fly around side the Enterprise, interviews with cast members, and more.

While the price is a bit high in my opinion, though this is somewhat understandable now that I know how much work went into this, I must say this is one of the most monumental sets of DVD's I have ever seen! They are also playable on SD DVD players, though without some of the extra content described above.

This link takes you to an 8 minute movie about these DVD's with some behind the scenes information on their creation.

If you want to know more (much, much more!) about Star Trek TOS, you can click this link from Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference.