Time to put my money where my mouth is?

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Ten months ago, when I was trying to figure out BitTorrent so I could keep up with Battlestar Galactica, I wrote this in a comment:

As it is, I’d gladly pay a few dollars per episode to download high-quality versions of this show (and, theoretically, other shows that I might be interested in in the future), much like I currently do with music from the iTMS (with the caveat that I’d expect any DRM to be no more restrictive than what the iTMS uses).

And wouldn’t you know it — Battlestar Galactica is now available through the iTunes Music Store at $1.99 per episode! Very nice.

Of course, over the past ten months I’ve become accustomed to the quality afforded through captures of HD broadcasts: the episodes I download through BitTorrent are ~350Mb each and widescreen at 624×352 pixels; the episodes Apple offers are ~200Mb and shown at the ‘standard’ (pan-and-scan? cropped?) 4:3 ratio at a much smaller 320×240 pixels. Of course, there is the risk of getting a bad quality rip from BitTorrent that wouldn’t hold up to the norm, while it’s probably safe to assume that the officially sanctioned videos from Apple will be consistently good quality.

As an experiment, I purchased the most recent episode of BSG (‘Pegasus’) and compared Apple’s version to the version I downloaded via BitTorrent.

Battlestar Galactica’s ‘Pegasus’
iTMS BitTorrent1
Filetype: .m4v .avi
Length: 45:27.04 44:19.03
Filesize: 207.26 MB 345.80 MB
Time to download: I didn’t immediately think to time this, roughly 20-30 minutes on my connection. Varies depending upon the number of active BT clients: at best speed should match the iTMS time; at worst speed could take anywhere from hours to days.
Dimensions: 320 x 240 624 x 352
FPS: 24.00 23.98
Video encoding2: -NA- Generic MPEG-4
Audio encoding3: AVC0 Media MPEG Layer 3
Data rate: 636.72 kbits/sec 1106.58 kbits/sec
DRM: Apple FairPlay v2 None
Comparitive: At native sizes, the iTMS video is sharper but noticeably darker. The BitTorrent copy isn’t as crisp, but being a few notches brighter makes it easier to see (a situation exacerbated by my using an old 17″ monitor that already has its brightness and contrast at maximum and really needs to be replaced when I can afford to do so). Even so, the iTMS video is gorgeous: darker and smaller (2/3 the height and 1/2 the width), but better quality — at native size.

At full screen, the smaller size, greater compression and lesser data rate of the iTMS track is very obvious. Compression artifacts not noticeable at 320 x 240 are very visible when blown up to my monitor’s standard setting of 1152 x 870. The BitTorrent video, while softer, doesn’t show nearly as much artifacting (but then, given the larger native size and widescreen ratio of the video, it’s also only being enlarged 247% as opposed to the iTMS version’s 360%).

All in all, while the iTMS video is better quality at native size, the BitTorrent copy is far more watchable when blown up to full-screen.
Notes: 1: Due to the distributed and decentralized nature of BitTorrent, the reported statistics, while representative of the quality of most BT downloads I’ve received, are only definite for this particular copy of this episode.
2: As reported by QuickTime Player’s ‘Window > Show Movie Properties” window under ‘Sound Track’.
3: As reported by QuickTime Player’s ‘Window > Show Movie Properties” window under ‘Video Track’.

So, now what? I did say in the original quote that I’d happily pay for “high quality” copies. At the moment, with Apple’s focus on optimizing the video for the iPod, I’m not sure that the video offerings are quite enough to tempt me away from BitTorrent on a regular basis. It’s close…but not quite there.

Unless someone gives me an iPod video for Christmas, of course. Then I may need to re-evaluate. ;)

Narnia and Christianity — does it matter?

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After reading Terrence’s ‘Saying No to Narnia‘ and Pharyngula’s ‘Narnia as an inoculation‘, both of which pointed to a Guardian UK article titled ‘Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion‘, I was somewhat annoyed. As an open-minded, pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, anti-Bush liberal who was brought up in a Christian household and counts Christianity as a major part of who I am and why I’m an open-minded, pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, anti-Bush liberal, it occasionally gets under my skin when I’m reminded yet again that ‘Christian’ has become a dirty word synonymous with the worst of the bigoted bible-thumping set, tainting anything that it touches.

It was quite nice to see Arcterex’s take on the same article, then:

I read the Narnia books as a child, and absolutely loved them. They had a similar draw as modern day Harry Potter. The downtrodden who think they aren’t anybody in the world finding out that they are a heros in a magical world.

Of course, then I found out later on in live about the religious overtones in the books…

And couldn’t care less. A good story is a good story, and personally I find this sort of ignorant reporting as bad as the Christian groups who go around saying how Harry Potter is promoting kids to become satanists and how it’s an evil book. It’s a friggin’ book and a good story. Geez.

Damn skippy. Sure, there are Christian overtones to the Narnia stories. There are Christian overtones to the Matrix stories, the Lord of the Rings stories, the Star Wars stories, and countless other stories (both printed and filmed), too. Why all the rancor? Just because the religious right (who all too often seem to embody the antithesis to the Christianity I grew up with) has jumped all over The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is it suddenly impossible to go out and enjoy a fun fantasy movie?

Sure, you can read all sorts of meaning into the stories and why they’re being brought to the screen now — religious indoctrination, right-wing propelled mass media conspiracy theories, whatever. You can also tell your inner Fox Mulder that every so often it doesn’t matter and go watch a movie.

That’s what I’m planning on doing.

LibraryThing Redux

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Well, it took a few hours (spread over the past few days) of free-time puttering, but my entire book collection (that isn’t loaned out, loaned out and not returned, lost, or still sitting somewhere at my folks’ house in Anchorage) is now entered into my LibraryThing catalog.

A paltry 373 books in total. Meh. I thought I’d be doing better than that…but then, I know there’s quite a bit that’s missing for one reason or another (books I remember having that aren’t there, series that are only half-complete, and other similar things). Still, it’s not a bad overview of my reading habits.

I may end up creating another account for Prairie and cataloging her collection also. That particular project is going to wait for a little while at least, though…getting mine done in two days is a good enough accomplishment for now.

Wishlist time!

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Seeing how it’s less than a month before Christmas and we’ve run full-bore into the season of greed and avarice giving, I figured I’d put up my wishlist. Of course, the one thing standing in the way is that for the most part, I really don’t have a wishlist…at least, not a serious one.

As far as wishlists go, there generally seem to be two basic types: the more serious “these are things I’d enjoy having because they’d be useful and good to have”, and the more frivolous “these are things I want because I’m a greedy boy and they’re cool”. Needless to say, I’ve always been far better at creating the second type of list.

So, in all seriousness, I’d be quite happy with good wishes, hugs from friends, and other such low-cost things. Socks are often good, as is clothing (preferably black, of course) — I’m long past the stage where I’d look down on getting clothing as opposed to “stuff”. As big a fan as I am of “stuff”…clothing’s just more practical, and at some point along the line I became mature enough to actually realize this. In other words, I don’t need anything.

However. If you’re in more of a mood to get me “stuff,” I’m not about to complain. ;)

My current “stuff” list tends to vary wildly by the month (or day, or even moment), but I have been occasionally tossing items into my Amazon Wishlist for a while now. What follows, then, is a rundown of what’s on my wishlist as of today, going from more realistic (that is, cheaper) on up to the wildly unrealistic (in some ways my favorite category, as the amount that I covet something seems to be inversely proportionate to the chance of my actually ever getting it).

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Tweaking the ads

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I’ve done a bit of tweaking on the ads served up on the pages of my site. While I certainly have no intentions of becoming an adfarm — I’ve seen weblogs where it’s difficult to find the content in the midst of a sea of ads, and that’s the last thing I want to do with my site — I finally decided that I didn’t mind at least slightly increasing the possibilities of having a few pennies slide my way from time to time.

To that end:

Donations: Two methods of simply tossing money at me are now displayed towards the bottom of the sidebar, using Amazon’s Honor System paybox and a PayPal donate button. No, I don’t really expect these to generate much (if anything), but you never know…I’ve been surprised a time or two in the past.

Advertising: For some time now, I’ve had one Google AdSense box just below the first entry, and an iTunes ad box in the sidebar. To these, I’ve added an Amazon ad box and a second Google AdSense box in the sidebar. Clicks through the Google ads and purchases made after clicking through the Amazon and iTunes ads will send a few fractions of a penny my way.

Now, as I’ve said, I don’t want the ads to overwhelm the content, so for the most part, I’ve made them as unobtrusive as possible — only one Google ad box is visible “above the fold” (visible when the page is first loaded), and the other ads don’t show up until you’ve scrolled through four full screens. Advertising mavens would probably tell you I’m doing this all wrong, but for me, it seems a good balance between having the ads out there and not overwhelming my few visitors.

It’s worth a shot, at least.

Quarrantine

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Urgh.

I have The Ick.

It started creeping in yesterday afternoon with a slight tickle in the throat, and has progressed steadily from there. Joy of joys, this is just what I needed.

Meh.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

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Prairie and I just got back from (finally) seeing the latest Harry Potter movie. In brief, I think this is my favorite of the series so far. Rather fast-paced (though it would have to be to pack everything in that it needed to) but still quite coherent and hitting all the key points, and absolutely spot-on performances from Brendan Gleeson as Mad-Eye Moody and Ralph Fiennes as Lord Voldemort.

Plus, I think I’ve got a crush on Cho Chang. ;)