overheard in providence nyc

According to yesterday’s New York Times, 2009 is a bellweather year for Blu-ray High Definition DVD’s. According to this blog, however, Blu-ray DVD’s are doomed. A bold statement, and just the kind of hasty proclamation you can expect from me in 2009. (Second example: One day I will live within 3 blocks of a zoo.)

Now, when I say “doomed”, I don’t mean Blu-ray DVDs will be gone by 2010. I’m just predicting that by the time next January rolls around, it will be completely clear to everyone that Blu-ray DVDs are not going to achieve anything close to the success of their standard-definition brethren. In short, Blu-ray DVD’s are not a successor to normal DVDs, and 2010 is going to be the year of the movie download.

In The New York Times article, Blu-ray supporters are optimistic that the falling price of Blu-ray players (i.e. sub-$200) will finally prompt their widespread adoption. Unfortunately, said supporters don’t seem to understand that 2009 is also the year of a giant global recession, and back when we weren’t in the giant recession (like last holiday season), Blu-ray player’s still sold for $400 dollars. Even worse, up until one year ago, Blu-ray was still in the midst of an absurdly drawn out format war with HD DVDs (RIP), which further encouraged sharp-eyed buyers to hold off.

According to Nielsen, about 25% percent of households have a high-definition TV (I got me a big one!), but last November the Wall Street Journal reported that less than 2% of households have a standalone Blu-ray player. Since Playstation 3 also plays Blu-ray DVDs, the percentage of households with Blu-ray buyability is actually closer to 7%, but many of those don’t necessarily HDTVs. Finally, even though it looks like holiday Blu-ray sales were stronger than expected, the number of households with blu-ray players doesn’t appear to have increased by more than 1%.

Now consider the competition: Currently (and while you’re reading this even) you can go to itunes or amazon, download an HD movie, and proceed to watch that movie, in high-definition, on your already high-definition computer screen. You can also connect your computer to your (HD)TV for $25-$50. If you don’t much care for dealing with computers (and really who does), Netflix is more than happy to stream HD directly to your TV, as is vudu, or even the good folks at apple.

All this brings me to my real point: Blu-ray deserves to fail. Besides that irritating format war mentioned up above, Blu-ray is set on pushing antiquated technology. DVDs scratch, and they take up a lot of space, and are slow to start up, and in the case of Blu-ray, you can’t even play them on most computers (to quote Steve Jobs, “Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt”). Remarkably, all of these problems would fade away except for the absolute worst, most absurd, totally and completely shortsighted thing about DVDs: it’s ILLEGAL to copy your own DVDs onto your computer. This isn’t to say it can’t be done, you can easily find software that rips DVDs, but because it’s illegal, this extremely desirable feature can’t be built into easy-to-use, super-popular programs like iTunes or Windows Media Player.

Shortly after MP3’s appeared in the mid-90’s, computer hard drives smashed the 10 GB barrier. All of a sudden it became viable for people to keep music collections on their computers. For years, a digitally-inclined individual could continue to buy CDs, copy the songs to their computer, and not worry about investing in a dead format. CD sales, of course, continued to plummet, but at least their decline was graceful. Now that HDs are breaking the 1TB = 1000GB barrier, it would be completely reasonable to rip your newly purchased (Blu-ray) DVDs to a $100 hard drive, and then transfer those movies to your laptop/ipod/tv-media-thingy as needed. Regrettably, the DVD-gods will have none of it, so by 2011, they’ll be finished.

Two days ago I was mentally preparing to break my month+ of blogging silence with the triumphant announcement that I successful acquired tickets to last Thursday’s Daily Show (with guest Ron Howard!) Alas, the evening was a flop. Despite having reserved/confirmed two tickets, and getting in line well within the specified timeframe, Jessica and I were one of a handful of people who didn’t get in. It was a tragic turn of events, but they did inform us that we could email the show requesting special VIP tickets to a subsequent taping. I think that basically means that next time around, we’ll be able to skip the line.

Despite my disappointment, I was keenly aware that, from a blogging perspective, not getting in was still a pretty solid outcome. First off, hundreds of people manage to attend each and every Daily Show taping, and millions see the resulting episode on TV, but how many poor schlubs get rejected after having reserved tickets, like 20 max. In short, this, right here, is the kind of first hand account of Daily Show rejection that only a handful of blogger’s are in a position to give. Plus, I now have a solid understanding of the logistics involved in going to see a Daily Show taping, and in the end, dear reader, isn’t that the reason you come to this blog?

LOGISTICS!

• You can request up to four (4) Daily Show tickets here. They’re booked many months in advance, but if you check back every few days, you’ll likely stumble on a cancellation. This works for The Colbert Report too.
• When sign up for tickets, the email asking for confirmation tells you to show up at 733 11th Ave (between 51st and 52nd) from 3:30 to 4:00. It also says that your guests can show up as late as 4:30. This isn’t particularly accurate.
• Since they don’t actually give you tickets until they start letting you in, anyone can hold a spot for anyone else until about 4:30. I arrived at 3:50, but as I’ve already lamented, this was a wee bit too late. Had I gotten there at 3:45, I’m sure I would have gotten in.
• If it’s warm day, I’d probably show up a little before 3:30. If you’re on early side, you’ll wait on 11th, but the later folks wait around the corner on 52nd. It’s always less fun to wait for stuff around a corner.
• At 4:00 or so, someone explains that you absolutely cannot use a camera during the taping, and that you’ll have to go through a metal detector. As such, I would try to bring as little as possible to the event. (They also let you know that you’ll be able to use the bathroom once you get inside.)
• TV studios are kept cold, so stay sharp and dress appropriately! Also 11th Ave and 52nd street, which is right by the river, would be a very cold place to wait in line when it’s chilly out.

So there you have it. Jessica and I also have some tickets reserved for the Colbert Report, but they are for midwinter, so I’m less excited about all the standing around outside.

In other news, I’ve supplemented my inability to actually go out and do things by joining facebook and twitter. More on that later, but for now, here’s a vaguely relevant blog post I wrote a long time ago.

I just noticed that my favorite elected official (a.k.a. my new hippest friend) linked here from PVD’s finest online cultural institution, The Providence Daily Dose. His link was in reference to my post highlighting a video on sculptor/machinist Arthur Ganson, so I can only assume anyone following the link is expecting to seeing some other hot videos that appeal to nerdy/techy/artsy types (Dave’s ultra hip now, but in college he was a math major).

Not being one to disappoint, I was tempted to embed the newest Sony Bravia ad, except then I decided it wasn’t so hot and that really their older ads are much more exciting (especially the first one, which features 250,000 multicolored bouncy balls). Instead I’ve decided to embed this video, brought to you by the freethinking radicals over at Quicksilver, and made by a bunch of crazed Bill Ayers supporters no doubt.

If you’re cooking a meal that includes both shrimp and genuinely hot peppers, make it a point to cut/handle the peppers before peeling the shrimp. Peeling a pound and half of shrimp, it seems, leaves microscopic abrasions on your fingers, making them particularly sensitive to the capsaicin in said peppers. Should you clean and cut your peppers after peeling your shrimp, the resultant burning sensation will significantly inhibit your ability to continue cooking and/or focus on enjoying your meal.

In truth, this is the second time I’ve made this mistake. The last time, which was about five years ago, I’m pretty sure I’d been sanding or scrubbing something earlier in the day. Regardless of the cause, putting your hand in water (or even better, milk) definitely helps, but who wants to sit around with their hand in a bowl full liquid. Holding a glass of ice water is a good compromise. I’ve also heard putting your hand in yogurt hand helps, but come on, that’s no way to live.

Since the Olympics, my blogging has been sparse. This seems silly given how much time I spend each day essentially talking out ideas with myself. Why don’t I record some of these monologues on the internet? Contributing factors appear to include an innate inability to keep to a schedule, as well as a deep-seated apprehension about “accomplishing things” with my time.

Psychological stopping-blocks aside, there is also a very concrete reason for my recent reluctance to write. “Overheard in Providence” is now a lie (bold-faced)! In June I began cohabiting a lovely one-bed room with my lovely girlfriend in my lovely hometown (a.k.a Manhattan). As of September, I ceased paying rent in Providence altogether. Thus, for this month and last, I have been unable to consider myself a resident of Providence.

When I started this blog, I had the misguided notion that I would post actual quotations that had actually been overheard in actual Providence. Despite a carefully crafted submission form, this did not happen (thanks a lot, general public). Instead I was forced to fill this blog with my own musings (take that, public), but I kept the name, despite criticism mind you, because I felt that it accurately reflected my status as a New Yorker livin’ n’ bloggin’ in PVD. Now, however, it mainly reflects the fact that I own the domain name “overheardinprovidence.com”. (sidenote: I also own the domain providencehalloweendayparade.com, so if Providence wants to have a Halloween Day Parade anytime soon, I’d better be on board.)

And there you have it; I’m a New Yorker, anew. I now reside on 116th St. and Frederick Douglas Blvd. (formerly 8th Ave and/or Central Park West), although I haven’t severed all ties to Providence. Besides my inappropriately named blog and my tenuous status as a contributer to the (newly redesigned!) Providence Daily Dose, my perpetual status as a Brown University CS graduate student ensures my frequent contact with this blog’s namesake.

Perhaps one day, in the distant, distant future, I’ll cease attending Brown University. When that day comes, I may find myself inclined to change the name of my blog. For now though, I’m contented with my newly modified header and this vaguely apologetic post. I will continue to be overheard.

Update: I actually registered providencehalloweenparade.com, as Dave (below) points out, providencehalloweendayparade.com is a profoundly stupid url. Providence needs a “Halloween Parade”, not a “Halloween Day Parade”.

That’s it. That’s the post.

(I just felt like the internet was missing something without it.)

A few days ago I hyped up the United State’s exciting split second win in the Men’s 4 x 100 relay. It turns out you can now watch the entire race underwater on NBC’s site (provided you first install Microsoft Silverlight). I must say, on my internet connection at least, the quality of NBC’s online videos is impressive.

If horseracing is the sport of kings, then surely bowling is a … very good sport as well.”

Truer words have never been spoken by fictional athlete and animated gadabout Homer Simposon, but alas, neither horseracing nor bowling are in the Olympics. Instead, we’ll have to make due with gymnastics (also 35 other sports).

Gymnastics gets quite a bit of coverage here in the US, but I have mixed feelings. Certainly the level of athleticism involved is quite high, but the scoring, if not completely subjective, is hardly an exact science. In 2004 for instance, men’s olympic gymnastics was marred by controversy, leading a Canadian judge to evenutally admit he was pressured into boosting Alexei Nemov’s score in the Men’s High Bar Finals, an Olympic outrage to be sure.

Since then, the gymnastics scoring system has gotten a complete overhaul, meaning no more perfect 10’s. Instead a routine’s total score, which is usually between 15 and 17, is the sum of an “A score” and a “B score”. The A score is calculated in advance from a routine’s 10 most difficult elements, plus bonuses for transitions between these elements (except in the case of the vault, where the score just comes from the whole twisty-flippy-vault-move). The B score is calculated during a routine’s execution by having judges subtract the deductions they witness from a start value of 10.

Some folks (confused gymnastic types mostly) feel the new system is flawed, as it seemingly encourages the pursuit of technical difficulty over flawless artistry. Certainly the system itself embodies this principal. In the long term, I’m most definitely convinced of the new system’s potential, but in 2008, since there’s very little precedent, scoring still feels a tad clunky.

Cumbersome evaluations aside, if you watched the Men’s Gymnastics Team Finals live Monday, you likely came away satisfied. The US Team, coping with the loss of both Hamm brothers due to injury, was more than happy to take home the Bronze. China, meanwhile, asserted it’s newly found herculean dominance by besting second place Japan by over 7 points (which seems like a large margin of victory).

One highlight from China’s perfomrance was Chen Yibing’s performance on the rings, which you can actually watch, or in my case rewatch, here on nbcolympics.com (skip to about 19 minutes in). You may need to download Microsoft Silverlight first, but trust me, it’s worth it, because NBC has put up a whole boat load of video along with a number of events you can watch live.
In the live streams there are no pesky announcers, so it’s perfect for watching multiple events at once. As I’m writing this, for example, I’m able to keep an eye on the Women’s 50m Air Rifle Final while at the same time watching the Men’s Gymnastic’s All-Around on NBC. Go ‘lympics!!!

Anyway, the Women’s Team Final on Tuesday proved slightly less satisfying. Unlike the US Men, the US Women were hoping to best China and take first, and I was pretty jazzed about whole thing because the team captain Alicia Sacramone currently attends Brown University. Unfortunately, Alicia was a little off her game, and the US had to settle for silver (although they probably wouldn’t have won even if Alicia hadn’t fallen). Also, the victorious Chinese “women” looked a tad young, and there appears to be good reason to be suspicious. Even famed gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi, Bob Costas’ cohost during the event, couldn’t resist calling their age into question at the very end of NBC’s broadcast.

Whether they are 16 or not, it hardly changes the disturbing fact that world’s greatest women’s gymnastics team has an average height of 4′-9”, and an average weight of 77 lbs. The more shapely US team, in contrast, towers over them at an average height just over 5′ and an average weight of 107 lbs. Rather than rely on difficult to verify age restrictions, I encourage the International Gymnastics Federation to consider mixing things up yet again and bringing tug of war back to the Summer Olypmics.

And finally we conclude with the real motivation for this post: what the hell is up with the women’s floor routine? First off, it’s set to (often questionable) music, clearly a misstep for any event wishing to be considered a sport. Second, almost all of the routines consist of a series of very impressive flips, tragically interspersed with awkward limb flailing. The flips are certainly Olympic-worthy, but if you’re going mix in the other stuff, and set it to music, why not just bite the bullet and do some actual dancing? I realize competitors are probably demonstrating their ability to execute some sort of required gymnasticy movements, but said movements don’t appear any more physically challenging than say, ballet, and they sure as hell look worse. As near as I can tell the routines would be a heck of a lot better if a choreographer were involved. My only guess as to why they aren’t doing this already is that maybe it’s too hard to dance well when you’re also worrying about having to do all those crazy flips. I’ll have to look into it.

Bonus Fact: Bowling was featured in the 1988 olympics as a demonstration sport.

Since my last post, in which I heralded the arrival of the 2008 Olympics, this blog has been inundated with over 2 comments. The most recent comment even contained the word “Olympic”. Either America has a bad case of Olympic fever or this blog’s popularity just skyrocketed. Either way, the only sensible course of action is to kick things up a notch with some in depth, olympic-sized commentary on my olympic-filled weekend.

• Swimming: In terms of raw Olympic excitement, swimming has so far been the highlight. Thanks to the introduction of the Speedo’s LZR swimsuit (as well as Beijing’s top notch pool), world records are being broken in spades. In last night’s 4 x 100 men’s freestyle relay, for instance, the top 5 teams all broke the previous world record. Even better, the US team, which completely smashed the world record by nearly 4 seconds, pulled out a dramatic come-from-behind victory by overtaking France in the final split second (apparently France had been quite confident about it’s chance at victory), and in so doing kept alive hopes of Michael Phelps winning a record 8 gold medals. What’s more, this dramatic race was broadcast live at 11:30 last night, a rarity given the 12 hour time difference (related fact: China, which is as long as the US, uses only one timezone).
• Volleyball: NBC has been broadcasting quite a bit of volleyball, an excellent sport which is having its most exciting century ever thanks to its switch to “rally scoring” in 2000 (meaning a team no longer has to be serving to score). One problem with volleyball is that anytime you get a chance to play it, it’s usually with a sizable chunk of people who don’t know how to hit a volleyball (it’s “bump, set, spike” folks, come on), but at the olympic level they don’t seem to have that problem.

  Also, since 1996 the Olympics have featured beach volleyball, which is definitely one of the “cool” summer olympic sports. It’s set on a beach, the player’s outfits keep things casual, and there are, apparently, cheerleaders in bikinis. Beach volleyball is also genuinely exciting to watch (much more diving than most terrestrial sports), and this weekend it just so happened to feature a stunning upset in which the US team (reigning world champions) lost to Latvia (the 23rd seed out of 24 teams). Fear not, though, our boys on the beach have since trounced Switzerland in straight-set blowout.

• Badminton: Like volleyball, badminton involves a net, but the similarities stop there. For one, badminton is one of the few summer sports in which the US has never one a medal (the other two are table tennis and team handball). Sadly, based on the events of this weekend (and today), it doesn’t look like that’s about to change. Part of the problem, I think, is that many American’s view badminton as tantamount to croquet, or possibly horseshoes, in terms of it’s potential athletic prowess. In contrast, many Asian nations take the sport quite seriously, which why China has gone out of its way to construct one of the finest badminton venues ever built. As NBC’s announcers have been quick to point out, the gym, located at the Beijing University of Technology, has been specially built to keep airflow below 0.5 mph, but at the same time maintain a cool temperature. To accomplish this, over 9000 vents are located under the spectators’ seats. Badminton (and perhaps table tennis?), may be a tad delicate for America’s tastes.

  Additional Badminton Fact: In badminton you hit a shuttlecock, which according to the internet consists of a piece of cork embedded with 16 overlapping feathers from the left wing of a goose.

• Equestrian: I don’t actually know anything about equestrian events, but I was watching dressage for like 15 minutes at some point, and there were a couple of observations I wanted to put out there. 1) The apparel for this event seems oddly formal for a summer sport (it’s kind of the anti-beach volleyball). 2) There is a 67 year old competing. In contrast, swim fans get all excited when a 41 year old competes, and in women’s gymnastics, 31 is ancient. 3) Equestrian sports are the only sports in which Men and Women compete against each other. 4) Horses have passports, and from what I can gather, they appear to be a good deal larger than human passports.

Update: Croquet, it turns out, was an event in the first Olympics, along with some other odd choices.

If you’re part of overheardinprovidence’s legion of fans, you probably noticed that I haven’t posted anything in over a month. My apologizes. I think I was out looking at stuff or something. Regardless, there’s no need to dwell.

If you’re also part of the relatively small group of people that watch Summer Olympics, you probably noticed that they started yesterday. I noticed that too, and consequently I have little intention of leaving my house for the next 2 weeks (15 days actually).

As I noted one year ago, NBC anticipates generating 3600 hours of footage, which if recorded (and I think it’s safe to assume NBC is recording it) should last until 2010 olympics, provided you limit your daily olympic intake to 6 hours a day. As for me, I plan to watch it all in the next two weeks (step 1: rent 8 more TVs), then give y’all a heads regarding what to look out for.

With so many world class competitions taking place in parallel, there’s already plenty to blog about. I could, for instance, recount the Chinese weightlifter, and now gold medalist, Chen Xiexia’s (olympic) record-breaking clean-and-jerk, which I just witnessed. I could muse over Przemyslaw Wacha of Poland’s victory over Estonia’s Raul Must in olympic badminton (which I also just witnessed). I could hype up the US women’s sweep in saber fencing (don’t worry, you haven’t missed that one, it’ll be broadcast later today). Or I could just provide a helpful primer on team handball, which is getting a surprising amount of coverage here on day 1 (It’s like soccer, only miniaturized, indoors, and you can use your hands… AWESOME!).

Needless to say, they’ll be time for all that later though (especially that last one). For now, I’m just going to start things off with a clean slate and give a quick rundown of recent events which a more diligent person would have blogged about.

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