Yesterday I canceled my Netflix account. It wasn’t because I didn’t like the service. I actually loved it. I think it is a great idea, and the best option out there. I just wasn’t using it enough to justify the expense. I looked at my queue a few times in the past few months and there never really was any really interesting I wanted to watch. I had cleared out the backlog of movies I had wanted to see. The amount of movies I do want to watch I can simply download on demand using my Apple TV. I think it will be cheaper. I tried this once before and after 3 weeks I was back on Netflix. This time I am not so sure. I really haven’t used it much in the last two months, and I hadn’t used their streaming service at all in months so that wasn’t even a selling point anymore.
Movies
More Blog Tweaking
After a really bad night sleep I decided to lounge around on the computer this afternoon. I ended up looking through he WordPress Plugin directory and found a bunch of new plugins for my site. I found some cool analytics plugins. I also added some nifty plugins that does some magic and suggests related posts like the one someone is reading. I find it interesting to tweak the site to see what else I can do with it. Totally useless time spent but fun!
At night I ended up going to see The Hangover with Danny. The movie was very funny! We grabbed dinner afterward, but I refrained from drinking. I was happy to get home at a reasonable hour.
The Movies
I hung out during the day today. Nothing spectacular. Just happy to relax after a long week at work.
Meet up with Danny this evening to see the new Star Trek movie. I was skeptical about the movie since I can’t remember a good Star Trek movie since my dad took me to see Star Trek II in the mid 80’s. I was pleasantly surprised. It was a decent movie. Nothing spectacular in my opinion but pretty good.
Afterwards Danny and I grabbed food at a bar near the theater. I got to have some Obon, so I was happy to have some nice scotch.
Observe and Report
Went to see Observe and Report with Danny tonight. That movie was disturbing. That being said, it was also funny so overall I liked it. After the movie we headed over to The Heartland Brewery for dinner. I stuck with one Obon scotch and no other drinks. I am still recovering from my cold.
The weather today was fantastic. I brought a jacket thinking that it would get cold at night. Leaving for the subway after dinner it was still nice enough out that I didn’t need it. Go figure. All and all a nice relaxing day, even if I didn’t do any of the shopping I had wanted to!
Grand Torino
Beata and I went to see Grand Torino on Monday. I read good things about the movie. It didn’t disappoint. It turned out to be a great drama. It also turned out to be pretty funny. That was unexpected. Well I should say it was unexpected by me. Beata said she read it was funny. I didn’t believe her. They were able to make a dark drama actually be a bit funny. I liked it.
Afterward we went to Dukes for some dinner. I haven’t been there in a while so it was good to go back there.
I am not sure why my friend Brian thought that I remind him of the Eastwood character. BG, I never beat someone down with a hand gun, and I don’t think I am that jaded:) Now my will might be as colorful as the one in the movie, but that is where I draw the line!
Slumdog Millionare
Saw slumdog millionare tonight. It was a good movie. I went to dinner afterward. Overall a fun night.
James Bond
Tonight I saw the latest James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace last night with Danny. It had some good action sequences but otherwise was simply an OK movie. It didn’t suck, but it wasn’t so memorable. Casino Royale was a much better movie in my opinion. After the movie Danny and I hit the Heartland Brewery for dinner. I only had one drink because I think I am fighting a cold. Otherwise a relatively uneventful day.
Video Conversion Round 2
I finally put the order in to convert some VHS tapes I have over to DVD. I was so satisfied with the 8mm conversions that I am using the same place. I am also sending in about 400 photo's to be scanned as well. I am really upset at the condition my mom kept these photos. She is now finally keeping them in photo box's after years in baskets near the radiators and open windows in her apartment. Tons of photos have been ruined or damaged by getting wet or really hot. I hope the Home Movie Depot is able to scan everything I sent in. All I can say is thank goodness for Photoshop, or in my case Gimp since I am not paying for Photoshop.
I underestimated the number of photos that my parents actually have. I am at 400 photo's in the one box that I took from my mom. I didn't even get everything out of the box but I figured 400 was a nice round number to start with. There is about 4-5 other box's of photos to go, plus a box of slides. I think I might blow my budget on this project. In the end I think it will be worth it to have everything in digital format. I am also having trouble identifying what I might have already scanned over the past 10 years. I found a bunch of images that I already scanned a few years ago, and I bet a bunch more will be duplicated.
My annal attempt at cataloging everything is paying off to a certain degree. I was able to post a bunch of stuff to Facebook and it is hilarious to see the comments from friends.
On the video side of things I am doing only two VHS tapes in this run. That is because I want the original AVI's of these two tapes, and the HDD I am sending the processing place can only handle about two tapes. I am sending in my sisters sweet sixteen video and my Bar Mitzvah video. The next round of stuff I don't really want or need the original source material so I won't use a hard drive. I will wait until I get this first batch back before I send in the next one. That way I can also spread the expense into another month. This stuff isn't cheap, but this batch is about half the price of the 8mm batch.
Dinner With My Parents Continued
If you read the title of the post you would think that I had dinner with my folks again. Well you would be wrong. I wanted to write a little bit more about what I learned from watching the videos with some color commentary from my parents.
I now know my mom's original hair color. My dad didn't look so bad in the late 60's, early 70's. By the mid 70's he looked like a cabbie. I don't know what happened. He had a major fro by the late 70's but thankfully I didn't see that on any video, but we have photos.
I was a really skinny kid, but in baby video's I looked really fat. My mom always thought that was funny because I did look pudgy but i was never heavy, I just looked it. She called it baby fat. By the time I was 4 I was a twig.
Dinner With My Parents
Tonight my parents came over and we had dinner. We ordered in, which is is a change of pace for us. I finally gave my mom her birthday present. We viewed the raw footage from the 8mm film I had converted to DVD. Seeing the reactions from both my parents was well worth the price I paid to have the film converted. I took notes on when most of the clips were taken so I could resequenced them correctly. I had to guess at the order of teh clips when I had them put to DVD. I am glad I paid to get the raw AVI files since I can go back and add a music sound track and sequence the files using iMovie. I demonstrated one of the 22 clips with a music sound track and my mom loved it. The video editing takes time, but the finished product is fantastic.
Today was basically a trip down memory lane. I had been playing with iMovie for a while before my parents came over. I wish I had more reasons to take more pictures or video, since I have fun editing stuff. The only real stuff I take pictures of now are my niece and nephew. I showed my mom some quick slide shows of them on my Apple TV and she loved them also.
My biggest problem is that there is almost no video of me as a kid except for the 8mm video I just put to DVD. Then there is my Bar Mitzvah video that I have a low quality MPEG-1 of. I am having that converted by the same people that did the 8mm videos in the next week or so.
Once I have the finished DVD with some music to it I will give my parents a remastered copy. If I have time I will also put a web friendly version on my flickr page for other family members.
The stroll down memory lane was fun, but I need to get ready for work tomorrow.