litch

So I'm an idiot.

I kept poking at my replay tv trying to figure things out and I went ahead and wired it's input directly to the tv, and there's a great big message saying terminal timed out. I tried powercycling and other stuff, got nothing, after several attempts I got ahold of someone at time warner and they tried resetting it but nothing. While we were troublshooting he hasked me why I had the box in the first place.

I couldn't think of a reason, the replay tv has a tuner. We scheduled someone to come out but in the mean time I tried to remember why it was set up that way. The only thing I can think is that once upon a time we used to get PPV shows and needed a box for that, but I haven't don that in years.

So I pulled it out of the line up and kicked myself for leasing a box I didn't need for 8$/mo for something like 2 years.

Signal works great without the damn cable box, though the skipping harddisk issues are still there. I need to dig a bit more and find out if pulling the disk causes irreperable issues.

Wow

I am just blown away, I just watched this fascinating show, Going Tribal, it's a series where this english guy goes poking around the backwoods of the world and in the episode I just watched he went through a Bwiti Iboga initiation after living with the Babongo tribe of pygmies in Gabon for a month.

I had seen adverts for the series but it didn't tickle me much, another white dude with a camera crew and all his crap visiting the yokels I thought, but with no Battlestar Galactica I just watched the Discovery friday night lineup of Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs (kinda cool in and of it self), and Going Tribal. I was very much impressed.

He spent a month living with the Babongo and managed to do it without coming off like a complete prat. Then he did a full on multi-day hallucinagenic ordeal (as he put it, a days walk from the nearest road and two days from the nearest medical help) and really seemed to invest into the experience. It was fascinating, it reminded me of my most moving Acid Trips and it captured the remnants of one of the last hunter/gatherer societies that will probably vanish within the next decade or so.

I really reccomend making the time to watch it.

So I recently added a couple shows to my ReplayTV's record list.

Stranded and No Reservation, both on the travel channel, and it's the first time I've had much use for the channel.

Stranded's conceit is they dump the host (Cash Peters) in the middle of someplace with no money and no idea where he is and he has to beg food, entertainment, and sleeping space off the strangers there. I really like the idea, very much the kind of thing I envision when I think of "Travel" and it does give you a better sense of what the vibe is like in the places he goes. I keep wondering about the cameraman and any other crew for the show though, the fact of their existence can't escape my attention (even though it's obvious the producers would like us too) what do they do for food and lodging? And somehow their presence makes his travails just a bit too put on. Cash Peters is engaging and funny, with a lovely lovely voice but he's a bit of a whiney prat.

No Reservation is a cook's Travel Show. The host, Tony Bourdain, is evidently a noted cook in new york that started writing a travel column and a couple of books. I like his take on travel for food's sake and I got hooked on his first episode where explored the wilds of darkest New Jersey, he had Mario Batelle as a suprise guest and had an interesting exposition on the evolution of food there. The best part was when he went to a craft cheese farm there (farms in Jersey, who'da thunk) and the passionate engineer turned cheese farmer. I like the snarky attitude of his but it wears a bit after a while.

The other stuff I watch regularly is House, Scrubs (basterds who run it conflicting with House), Battlestar Galactica, Rescue Me, Daily Show, and Good Eats. I will still watch CSI but it's starting to drag a bit (the original, the others suck), Law and Order turned to crap, West Wing keeps trying but has gotten too removed from reality to really have the impact it did originally. PBS's Frontline hasn't moved me lately like it used to and Nova has been pretty pedestrian. Still worth checking out but not like the best shows of the past. (Damn Republicans)

So rather than go to bed last night I noticed I'd recorded an episode of scienceNow I decided to watch it. It was pretty nifty, they really skewered the bushco "hydrogen fuel cells will save the country" crap and basically said we'll be lucky it's only going to be 20 years before we have fuel cell vehicles and the infrastructure to produce & distribute the hydrogen it would require to fuel them. It makes it very clear why the rightwing powers which are so allied to the oil intrests throw it out everytime environment issues come up. It's a dodge, a dodge that has worked for a good 5 years, put off preassure to raise CAFE standards and energy conservation based policies. I think we are more like to see consistent commercial fusion power before we see consisten commercial fuel cell vehicles.

But that's all stuff that's been known for a while, just the general scientific community has come to accept that it is going to be a while. The part that was really cool though was the RNAi segment. Cellular biology really is the area I think we have the biggest deficit of knowledge that we can rapidly improve on. The last biology course I took ~1990 really excited me and I seriously considered changing majors to pursue it but I was burnt out on school and needed to get the hell out. I suspect I will always regret that decision. I hated biology in secondary school, it was the default required science class so the material was inane, the teachers were stupid, and my classmates were horrid. Worse, the tiptoing around evolution the early 80's demanded eviscerated the subject beyond even the possibilty that the wretched school system could supply. (And I understand it's only gotten worse).