reviews

I’ve been watching The Godfather on Blu-ray, and have been rather disappointed just how muddy the image is. Credit where credit’s due: the rich high-contrast nature of Gordon Willis’ astounding cinematography is well captured for the most part. The shadows are as black as they were in the theatre. You can really appreciate the control of light, especially as characters emerge from darkness and disappear back into it. But the high definition image resolution just isn’t there....

The introduction of apps have changed the iPhone into more than a phone with a touchscreen. The online world changed for me this year. I discovered the handheld — or rather what the handheld promises to be. I had a Palm 700p before. It was a good phone. Qwerty keyboard. Great reception. Worked just about anywhere. But after more than 2 years with the Palm, I just had to try the iPhone, the multitouch interface, the motion sensor....

Labor Day weekend was simply gorgeous in Boulder. Lots of sun, not too hot, blue skies. It was a perfect weekend for getting to know my new Rans Stratus XP. The long wheelbase required an extra-long bicycle mount, one designed for tandem bicycles. Earlier in the week, I picked up a Thule rack and a RockyMounts R4 rack that could handle the 65" wheelbase of my Rans. The bike fit perfectly....

So I’ve been playing with OmniFocus alpha to see if it can work for me as a personal productivity/task manager, but as I noted before, the system lacks a way to prioritize tasks. It seems rather obvious to me that you want to identify the important must-do items before you start filling in your day. I could spend all day answering the phone, reading and writing emails, catching up on my feeds, having meetings, doing conference calls … and not getting done the things that need to get done....

I’m a little astonished — and I suppose I should be embarrassed, but I’m not — by how I behaved watching Battlestar Galactica this past Friday night. Exodus: Part 2 was one of the most exhilirating and most moving episodes of the entire series so far. It was one of those episodes that makes the exceptional pilot miniseries — which I just saw again last night showing it to a friend who was a Babylon 5 fan but she never had seen any Galactica — almost pale by comparison....