ThePete.Com / STEALING AMERICA ON DVD just $5!!

STEALING AMERICA ON DVD just $5!!

by ThePete 9:56 pm 2008-09-18

Stealing America: Vote by Vote, a documentary I helped with is now on DVD!!

The best bit is that you can buy a copy for just five bucks!! That’s an even better deal now that the dollar is so weak!!

Please buy your copy here: stealingamericathemovie.org/order_dvd.html

Or check out the movie poster and the trailer:

Please pick up a copy of this movie and help spread the word about how flawed our election system is!! Show this movie (or ANY movie about our flawed election system) to your friends and family.

We can’t be sure our votes will be counted if things don’t change and what good is a democracy if all the votes aren’t counted?

by ThePete 9:56 pm 2008-09-18 In TheNews, Politricks, ThePete.Com | Tags black box voting, democracy, democracy inaction, documentaries, Dorothy Fadiman, DVD, election systems, Home Video, Stealing America | $ |

My Digital Media Library Solution

by ThePete 5:18 pm 2008-05-05

So, I’m finally doing what I’ve wanted to do for the past couple of years. In preparation for our big move across the country, I’m packing up not only my belongings, but my media collection. Years ago, I ripped all of my CDs to mp3 and now I’m going through the process of ripping all of my DVDs to mp4. I picked up two Maxtor 1TB externals for $230 a piece (at Best Buy!) and have spent the last few days dumping mp4s and mp3s onto one of them. Yesterday, I noticed I had already passed the 500 gig mark, so I thought I should stop and back them up onto the other 1TB drive.

That’s my plan–since hard drives are so very fallible (as are optical disks), I decided to keep everything on one drive and use a back-up application (I use Deja Vu for the Mac) to automatically back up everything.

The only catch I’ve run into so far is the time it takes to back up 500+ gigs of media–it’s loooong. Notice one of my drives was last modified at 10:46pm last night–that’s when I started the back-up. Now check my system clock–yep–it took that long to finish. I think that’s like 17-and-a-half hours to back up half-a-TB. The thing is, I’m not done yet. O_O

Anyway, I feel like any kind of DVD is not long for this world, what with Blu-Ray having just won the war and holodiscs being around the corner (here: http://snurl.com/hvd ). So, this is my solution. In a perfect world I’d have a third Teradrive that I’d back-up onto once a month that I’d keep under my pillow at night. :D

Now, imagine having your entire media collection in the palm of your hand. Now imagine having *my* entire media collection in the palm of your hand. Yeah, that rocks.

Of course, it’ll rock more once those holodiscs are affordable and I can burn my entire collection to a single 3.9 tera HVD (almost 4 times over!) and then mail them to friends for safe keeping. ^_^

Mobile post sent by thepete using Utterz. Replies.

by ThePete 5:18 pm 2008-05-05 TheTech.ThePete.Com | Tags home audio, Home Video, Maxtor, ripping CDs, ripping DVDs | $ |

HDTV, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, BAH, HUMBUG!

by ThePete 2:15 pm 2008-02-07

The screencap comes from: http://www.imdb.com/…-06/film/5

Waaay back when I was a kid, my father took me to work one day. It might have been part of "take your kid to work day" or something. Regardless, I loved going into my dad’s job because he worked in the Research & Development department at CBS in New York City. He’s actually been co-responsible for things that effect all of our TV watching. He had a major hand in a common type of video editing called offline editing. He also developed technology that allows that little network logo to appear in the corner of your screen. Another thing he did which I hate him for is working out a way to run TV shows a bit faster so CBS could squeeze another commercial into an hour of TV.

THANKS, DAD! >_<

But that time I was a kid, I was introduced to some incredible technology–I had already seen the first LaserDisc player, the first home VCR, the first practical, one-piece camcorder–that day, he showed me something that was called High-Definition Television.

He seemed very impressed with a truly MASSIVE TV set he showed me, which displayed some sort of football game on it.

"Look at how you can see all the people in the stands!" he said, showing the enthusiasm of a kid on Christmas morning.

He went on about the incredibly high-resolution picture the TV had (in about 15 years these numbers would actually mean something to me) and how eventually we’d all have TVs like this in our homes.

The thing was, I wasn’t all that impressed.

I grew up watching crappy VHS bootlegs of "Star Wars" on my family’s 19-inch TV set. When my mom would want to watch something else, I’d go upstairs and watch TV on an old black and white set.

Picture quality was *not* something I cared about then and it’s not something I care that much more about now. Sure, I don’t like static, or weird lines in my picture, but do I want to replace my entire DVD collection with HD-DVD or Blu-Ray DVDs? No way. I’m actually converting all of my DVDs to play on the 2.5 inch screen on my iPod. Replace my 11-year-old 19-inch Magnavox with an HD set? Not until they come down in price–a LOT.

Sure, I’ll pick up a convertor box when all TV signals go digital, but I still don’t see myself going HD or HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. And neither do a lot of other folks according to a news blurb at IMDB.com (http://www.imdb.com/…-06/film/5 ). Apparently 7 out of 10 folks that did upgrade their TVs to HD aren’t bothering with the DVD upgrade. My point is that most folks just don’t give a crap about HD vs SD, analog vs. digital, etc, etc. Sure, we still want the "biggest" and "best" but with our economy tanking–who can afford to care about a better picture?

Sorry, Dad!

Maybe it’s karma for that extra-commercial-in-an-hour thing you did.
Mobile post sent by thepete using Utterz. Replies.

by ThePete 2:15 pm 2008-02-07 TheTech.ThePete.Com | Tags Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, HDTV, Home Video | $ |