Since their advent, consumers have been fascinated by Blu-ray and HD-DVD. These high definition video formats promise better picture and sound quality for the movies you love so much. Accepting that you invested thousands in televisions or video projectors and sound equipment that can actually support a high definition format. The questions that most consumers are asking are:

1.Should I sell my DVD collection to make room for the newer, better media?
2.Which type of disc is better?
3.Will consumers largely choose one format over the other giving either HD or Blu-ray all the support?
4.Is Blu-ray or HD-DVD that much better than the DVD’s I have now?
5.What will the cost for the discs and the players be?

No one wants to spend the money to build up a new High Definition video collection only to find that in a few years Blu-ray has gone the way of Betamax. I mean, think about the number of DVD’s that you’ve seen in the past six months. How many of them did you borrow from friends or rent? If you choose the wrong format you might find youself with a very expensive, nearly useless player, and a collection of overpriced discs. There has been a push for both Blu-ray and HD-DVD to use similar encoding that can be read by one type of player, but thus far there have been no peace talks, only war.

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I decided today that I am going to do a website based soley on my hatred of the Harry Potter movies. The fans of the books will understand how I feel. When the first Harry Potter movie came out I was incredibly excited. I thought it would be impossible for producers and directors to ruin such a strong and entertaining plot. Unfortunately, the images and feelings the book brought were nearly completely absent from the movie. While the movie was still entertaining to those who had never read the books, it was a huge dissappointment for me and I’m sure for many other true fans. Not too far into the series they changed directors, and Richard Harris (the first Dumbledore) died. This only made the movies worse. Michael Gambon was brought on to play the part of Dumbledore, and the next movie was made. When I first saw “Prisoner of Azkaban” and laid eyes on the new Dumbledore I thought I didn’t like him just because he looked so much less like my idea of Dumbledore than Richard Harris. I was wrong. It soon became apparent that Michael Gambon didn’t act like I expected Dumbledore to act. I find this a little strange, because the character of Dumbledore had been present through several novels at that point, and it was pretty obvious what kind of a person he is. I decided to read Michael Gambon’s take on the role, and he said something about wanting to make the character his own. I realize that if you want to be passionate about a role you should make the character own, but it does not mean that you make up a character and try to be them instead. Michael Gambon obviously doesn’t understand the basic premise of acting which is to try and be like someone else, as opposed to making someone else, in this case a fictional character, like you. But Gambon isn’t the only problem. For some reason Hollywood thinks that sacrificing any action sequences in favor of character development is going too far. If you actually care about the characters in a movie that makes it a “chick flick” right? I feel what is very nearly rage against those who make the Harry Potter movies. So my new anti-Harry-Potter-Movies website will include clips from the movies that I have improved, will allow for clips that anyone else has improved, and will be a place to share your opinions about the movies.

Recently I became aware of the opportunity to write for the new Jazz blog JazzBots. Just for the fun of it, I submitted an application to become a writer for the blog. I have no intention at all of being chosen, but it would be fun nonetheless. Today I received an email from the Director of Database Marketing, whatever that means, talking about the position:

Dear JazzBots Applicant:

“Thank you to the overwhelming number of Jazz fans that have submitted their essay’s to become a co-author of JazzBots. The essays have been passionate, funny, creative and even moving - more proof that Jazz fans are the best in the world.

The deadline for entries has passed. We are reading each and every essay and will be contacting the top 30 candidates for in-person interviews, which we will conduct in the first week of August.

Thanks again Jazz Fans!”

Brendan Burke
Director of Database Marketing
Utah Jazz

We’ll see what comes of it. Oh and Mr. Burke, essays is not possessive in this context :).

A little while back after the site going down due to the Digg effect, we were required to get some new hosting. The company where we currently host is called Midphase. The hosting option we decided to switch to is something called a VPS or Virtual Private Server. In the setup of this server the name servers that this website runs off were change from midphase.com name servers to morrise.com name servers. After waiting for almost a day for the propagation of the DNS servers, the website was still pointing to midphase.com name servers. How did I know this? A little tool at dnsstuff.com. It was very useful in helping me debug name server issues and DNS issues.

I heard about this website several years ago, but it’s been a long time since I went there. The other day while I was surfing the internet looking at websites that had guidance on web design practices, I stumbled upon the link for this website again. So, I clicked on it. This point of this website is to show you badly designed websites so that you can learn from their mistakes and not use the same mistakes in your own page. The website itself is purposely badly designed so that you can learn from its bad design. My question, what can you learn from its bad design. You don’t go into a voice lesson and have the voice teacher sing badly to you so that you can learn to sing well. You’re bowling teacher doesn’t use incorrect bowling form and throw the ball down the gutter every time to show you how to be a good bowler. The whole idea of this website confuses me. I don’t want to see bad design. I can create bad design. I was someone to show me how to make good design. Is that too much to ask?

For those of you who don’t know, the 7th and final Harry Potter book hit the shelves on th 21st. As most other eager fans, I went down to the local Wal-mart at midnight to grab myself a copy. My wife and I spent almost the next day straight reading. I wish to post my reactions to the book here. Now, I’m telling you right now. If you didn’t read the book yet and you don’t wish to subject yourself to spoilers, don’t click the read more link.

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I am one of those Harry Potter fans who is obsessed enough to have read book seven (The Deathly Hallows) in its entirety even though the release was only days ago. I actually finished the book days ago. I feel like the Harry Potter series has been inspirational to me in a few ways. For example, it really makes me look at how committed I am to doing those things that will be of the most benefit to others. I think that the intricacies of the plot and the character development are extremely well done. Along with reading the books, I have also watched all of the Harry Potter movies. The movies have been a constant source of disappointment to me, because the don’t even come near to the quality of the books. I think the main issue is that while the plot advances in the movies, the directors, which are rarely the same from movie to movie, leave out a lot of things that would advance characters and relationships. I would also very much appreciate the use of contemporary music in the Harry Potter films. The students of Hogwarts aren’t at a fantasy adventure camp, and it is not the 1600’s. I think that the use of contemporary music in the films would do a lot to bring them into the here and now, and make the situations presented more real. Time-Warner needs to choose a director that is a die-hard Harry Potter fan. I always look to Peter Jackson as the poster child for what can happen when a true fan directs a movie. I have never been happier with a movie adaptation of a novel than I was with “The Lord of the Rings” series. If I was a Time-Warner exec. I might even consider bringing in a die-hard fan as a consultant on the films. Or, and this may sound presumptuous, they could just get me to direct them. If that sounds like a plan, and any Time-Warner executives are reading this, just post a comment that you want me to do it and I will get you my contact information any way I can.

I read something online today about how Google had a bad day with stocks and so I typed in Google’s stock symbol into Google and got a surprise. If you look at the after hours, it shows Google stock as being down 508.12 points. Now, I suppose that this is a programmatic error on their end, but it’s a scary prospect now isn’t it? This reminds me of the time when there was a “rumor” about the iPhone and Mac OS X Leopard being delayed. That really scared the investors. Who knows what something like this might cause.

Well, the day has finally come. I have been waiting for this day for a long time. Well, although today isn’t technically the day that Harry Potter 7 is available, this is the day of the Harry Potter party. The “Great Hall” was set up last night, picture forthcoming, and it’s looking pretty good. I was unable to stay the whole time they were setting up, but I was able to help somewhat. The walls have been covered with large sheets of gray butcher paper to make them look like stone. There have been props set up everywhere. The Hogwarts house flags hang from the ceilings, surrounded by stars. This should turn out to be an exciting party.

So, the Harry Potter party is set for this coming Friday. We have had a great time getting things ready. We spend several hours yesteday making the invitations this is what they ended looking like. We spent over an hour trying to make a decent wax seal, and ended up going with the one we had that worked which was a “H” my brother carved out of wood. Tomorrow we will start decorating a room in our house to look like the great hall. I hope that it ends up looking as good as we want it too. We have most of our activities planned as well. We are going to post a big board full of characters names and have all of our guests put a tic mark under each person who they think is going to die. We also plan to have everyone write down predictions for the books major plot points. The ensuing discussion could be brutal.