I picked out Marc Broussard's Home. I've only heard it on the radio once, but I like it.

Adding those over-fills the DVD rack. I don't know, maybe that means we need to trim down the collection some.

A while ago I learned about the Jewelboxing system. I ordered a set of the "Kings" (DVD cases and inserts) to help me make a DVD with this year's Christmas movie. The Jewelboxing cases are a bit different than the normal DVD cases you see, which I thought would add to the presentation. The result is what you see at the right.

I assembled the booklet, trayliner, and DVD label with Adobe Photoshop. On the DVD label is a photo of a slice of our 2003 Christmas tree, which we turned into an ornament. The background of the trayliner and booklet is a photo of wrapping paper (scaled down quite a bit). On the cover of the booklet are a few of the ornaments we've collected in the past few years. I printed each piece on the Jewelboxing perforated paper that was included with the Kings, fit them in the case, and I was done!

The text on the back of the trayliner (not visible in the photos) is some brief text about each of the three movies. The text visible on the booklet when the case is open (visible at the right) is credits for the music in each of the movies. And inside the booklet (also not shown here) is the slimmed-down version of What Christmas is as we Grow Older by Charles Dickens, as heard in Christmas 2003.

The DVD itself was made with Adobe Encore DVD. For the menu background I took a photo of part of this year's tree. All three (2001, 2002, 2003) Christmas movies are included on the disc. The result is the screenshot at the right.

Today I tried to listen to some of that music and it sounded garbled in a rather odd way. Every track from the disc sounded that way, too. I quickly remembered seeing some sticker on the packaging saying something about a copy protection scheme. Some searching quickly found an answer to the problem. In summary, all they did was make the disc minorly difficult to copy and made me realize I'll have to look more closely at the label when I buy a CD--and maybe not buy it. I'll be e-mailing BMG Media Max Customer Care to express my feelings, too.

Thanks to the above-linked article I've re-ripped the CD and it sounds good. It's worth noting that another way to work around this form of copy protection is to simply insert the CD before Windows starts up.

I have nothing against copyright and DRM--in fact, I'm in favor of them. I think the artist/owner should be able to keep a grasp of their product as well as get paid for it. It's their hard work; they deserve the profit from sales of it. Stealing music from the web or copying movies takes away from the value of the owners product. Blah, blah blah, so on and so forth. Since I legally own this CD, though, and the right to make copies of it for my own personal use, I expect to be able to do just that.

On a related note, in May QST is an article about Joe's visit to the League. In the article is a photo showing off the back of my head. You can read the article (PDF format), if you want.

You’re Chandler Bing!
Or Chanandler Bong, whichever. You’re the wittiest of your friends, but also sometimes the nerdiest. When your relationship is going well, your job stinks, and vice-versa. Your parents have messed up your life, but you try not to take it personally.

Who are you?

I also stumbled across unicron.com, a cool site with lots of photos of the Generation 1 toys that I had.

I've spent all week screwing with the TV-out, using both the S-video connection and the VGA connection. I haven't been having much luck. Once I got it working (which was itself a challenge!), the picture was bleeding so badly that it was nearly unintelligible. At best, it was still quite a bit less sharp than normal TV.

And for us, "normal TV" isn't too sharp in the first place. We have a cheap Sanyo TV with only a low-quality coax connection, so an RF modulator is required to connect it to our receiver and DVD player. That also means that the signal from the MythTV system is running through the RF modulator.

A quick test with the TV at work easily verified that the reason for the MythTV low-quality TV-out was the RF modulator and/or our TV.

So, no MythTV for us.

In case you don't know, MythTV is a "personal video recorder" (PVR) similar to TiVo or ReplayTV, allowing you to do things like pause TV and automatically record shows. MythTV is different in that it's a free, open-source Linux project with more and better features like automatic commercial-advance, the ability to easily prioritize recordings, and the MythWeather module.

Today was a big day at the ARRL: Joe Walsh (along with his manager and Bob Heil) came for a tour and to operate at W1AW.

We had a short opportunity to get photos and autographs, so I got my copy of The Eagles: Hell Freezes Over DVD signed. Joel, a coworker who took these photos, included his autographed QST magazine with my DVD in the photo at the right. Below are two photos from the photo/autograph "event."

I stumbled across their web site and found the Snob Quiz and You in 1905 games. According to the snob quiz, both Sherree and I are 50% snob. In 1905 I would have been a boilermaker; Sherree a servant.

Now I just have to finish correcting the significant number of incorrect song titles, album titles, artist's names, and years. Ugh.

1. Make the movie about all of Christmas, specifically including the preparation that goes into all of the gifts and other fun leading up to Christmas day. For Sherree and I this part is, in many ways, the best part of Christmas.
2. Record more interesting footage. In Christmas 2001 the camera was a static observer, which, in some ways, made the footage very boring. By bringing the camera closer to the action the footage would be much more exciting. That also meant I wanted to include more voice audio than in 2001, which I did.

Most of these were bought in the DVD/.com hey-day: when 800.com sold them 3 for a $1, Reel.com gave you more $10-off $25 coupons than you could use, and BrandsForLess.com gave you $25-off $50 for purchasing through reel.com. Ah yes, those were the days.

Hyperlinked titles go to reviews we've written.