If you have ever enjoyed any of Joss Whedon’s output, be it Firefly, Angel or especially the musical episode of Buffy, you owe it to yourself to see his new musical project: Dr. Horrible. It stops being free to stream on July 20th, so hurry! There’s no way to download or buy it legitimately in the UK at the moment so this is your only chance to see it until a (we hope) DVD release.
It stars Neil Patrick Harris as the eponymous horrible Doctor. You may recognise him as the awesome Barney from How I Met Your Mother. Those of you with longer memories will recall him as the precocious Dougie Houser MD.
He is excellent as Dr Horrible, a sorry excuse for an evil genius with grand plans to get into the Evil League of Evil and a hope to one day work up the courage to talk to the girl of his dreams. I’ll leave it there because I don’t want to give away too much but trust me: it’s laugh out loud funny and tuneful to boot - I had no idea that he could sing! Go and watch it!
I can’t remember when I first played with a ZX Spectrum. I know I must have come to the party relatively late since I was only 4 when it was released, unlike Chris who was old enough to have one at launch. This weekend he rescued one from his mum’s rubbish bin, complete in the polystyrene box it originally came in and with mint condition manuals. It even has the guarantee certificate, an unopened demo cassette and the 1982 Edition of the Sinclair Software Catalogue! Continue reading ‘ZX Spectrum nostalgia’
As I mentioned in the last post, I’m running the Media Center (yes, that’s how they spell it) interface from Vista Ultimate to drive my HTPC. Out of the box Vista Media Center (VMC) is capable of playing DVDs and MPEG2 broadcast content - such as the output of a Hauppauge DVB-T or DVB-S TV card. What it can’t do is play the more esoteric formats such as DivX, XVid and hidef containers such as the Matroska (MKV) files. Continue reading ‘My 1080p HTPC: The Software’
Part one of a series of posts where I record how I built my 1080p capable Home Theatre PC.
Having ditched the increasingly expensive and irrelevant SkyHD last year, we’ve been watching what little broadcast TV we see via a Windows Media Centre machine upstairs connected to an Xbox 360 front end. This was fine for the odd episode of Doctor Who or the Apprentice, but we wanted an interface that gave us access to all our music, archived TV, ripped DVDs along with live TV. Since the old XBMC can do neither live TV nor HD content and since the Xbox 360 in Media Centre Extender mode can not play back the more esoteric formats (such as MKV or XVid) it was necessary to build a true Home Theatre PC. Continue reading ‘My 1080p HTPC’
This post in which I collated (nearly) all the music used in series one of Life on Mars continues to be the most visited and most commented article on my site. The page has turned into a little community of 70s music lovers who have helped each other compile what must be the most complete list of music for the show. Thanks especially to “Sam” and “Mike K” who have contributed so much to the list. The post has proved so useful that I discovered recently that it is referenced on the Wikipedia article for the soundtrack album. Wikipedia fame!
Almost as impressive: there is now a BitTorrent floating around that contains all the series one tracks I originally collated for the page. I had always intended to create an iTunes “iMix” as per Richard’s suggestion - I still might if it hasn’t already been done. I can do the same for series two now my army of helpers has detailed all the tracks used.
Isn’t the web great?
Life on Mars has just started again on the BBC - I’ve not got round to seeing the new episode yet (Sky+ has it stored away safely for me) but it seems the new series has provoked renewed interest in my previous post about the excellent soundtrack the first series had. It looks like the BBC have taken down the page I referenced to get the music information, so for the benefit of the many people who have asked for it, here’s The Almost Complete Life on Mars Soundtrack (Series 1). I expect I shall get together the Series 2 music once it’s complete… Continue reading ‘The Almost Complete Life on Mars Soundtrack (Series 1)’
Bonus geek points to anyone who finds this funny.
After a little encouragement from Richard, I finally got round to watching Life on Mars - almost all of it in one sitting. I thought it was great, and not least because of the fantastic soundtrack. The BBC have been good enough to list all the tracks used in each episode, along with a little note that “there are no plans to release a soundtrack CD for Life on Mars”. I imagine the red tape involved in releasing all those tracks for one compilation would be nightmarish, but a notice like that is a red rag to a bull for someone with my kind of music collection.
Half an hour (and several trips to iTunes for missing tracks) later, I have completed my “[Almost] Complete Life on Mars Soundtrack”. I say almost because I’ve deliberately left out the tracks from Episode 7 where Sam hears modern music on the radio… I think my soundtrack can do without Britney Spears and Pulp. Not that I have anything against them - it just ruins the 70s cop-rock aesthetic!
I shall enjoy a 70s cop-rock inspired journey to work tomorrow - although not driving quite like Gene does in the show…
Update (Feb 2007): With the release of the new series there’s a renewed interest in the soundtrack. Since the BBC have removed the link I used, here’s a track list of my “Almost Complete” soundtrack.
A little while after turning my TV on today it displayed a nag screen. Just like a bit of Microsoft software reminding you that there’s a registration card in the box and you ought to send it back to the manufacturer, or some shareware demanding to be paid for. You can see the message in the image (left). I’m not annoyed by it, I actually found it rather amusing.
I’ve been messing around with the TV and my media device today, trying to get the best possible picture out of it. Behind the TV’s nag message you can see the media device is now running in all its 720p HDTV glory. The picture is unbelievably crisp - especially in the menus - and the picture from HDTV episodes of Lost or Stargate Atlantis is fantastic. The xvid compression means some detail is lost (Lost, hah!) so they don’t look quite as good as the HD Apple trailers, but it’s still mightily impressive.
The HD trailers on the other hand are nothing short of awe inspiring. I have never seen definition like it, on any screen anywhere. Animated films created entirely digitally do best, so Ice Age 2 and Cars both look outstanding, whereas trailers for films like Aeon Flux - HD media sourced from film - look slightly grainy - an artifact of the analogue to digital scan process. I’ve been trying a lot of the Windows Media HD files and there’s some beautiful stuff; Apple Quicktime also have some fantastic clips including a montage of the BBC’s nature/world footage with a great soundtrack.
Next step: build another media device (linked to the first) and stick it somewhere else in the house (probably the kitchen). Not so much because I need media in the kitchen, but because I want to prove it’s possible to do it!
Yes, I am a geek. Here’s the now playing list from my Tivo presented in all it’s RSS glory inside Safari on the Mac:
Download the code and installation instructions.
I had to learn TCL to make this work. That’s a whole new language for me. Neat.
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