Category: Uncategorized

I haven’t done much with the Flashlight Wiki lately, but a couple of other users have made some changes, which is a good sign maybe. My long time web host A Small Orange, which was a local company at one time, has changed hands a couple of times and has finally gone up on their price from $50 per year to $86. That is more than I want to pay, so I looked around for better options and found HostGator which you could get a really good introductory deal on by committing to 3 years of service for only $3.95 per month for their baby plan, which is pretty much unlimited shared hosting. Then before I could make up my mind, the website offered a better rate of $3.48 per month, so I took it.
Continue reading “Moving the Wiki”

Going way, way back, I used to write up a review of the Oscars ceremony on a movie discussion group. My friend Royce from that group started a movie discussion group on Facebook and he remembers me writing those and asks if I will post about it. Since I watch the broadcast every year, it isn’t that hard to write something up, so I am putting the one I wrote this year here. I thought I had posted more of these on the blog, but the only one I found was from 2005 when Chris Rock hosted.

This year’s Oscar was not one full of surprises. FiveThirtyEight made 8 predictions and got 7 correct, barely missing on Best Documentary, which even today after seeing who won, I could not name. They do not try to predict Best Screenplay, but if they did I am sure they would weigh the Writers Guild awards as a heavy predictor, and this year, in fact, Oscar awarded the same two movies as the Writers Guild. So as far as the competition goes, yawn. And they brought back Jimmy Kimmel to guarantee the maximum possible predictability.

What was different this year, was getting lectured by almost every woman on stage. I know they are mad, but I did nothing wrong. I even believe in diversity and inclusion and all of that, so why do I need to be continually hit over the head with it? They also had a couple of short tribute pieces dedicated to basically the same thing. Three women took stage and introduced a segment like that, but what I did not realize was that they were three of Harvey Weinstein’s accusers. So maybe a little bit of hidden poignancy there.
Continue reading “Oscars Review”

After thinking about it for a long time, then buying an indoor TV antenna that worked fairly well, I decided to cut the cord and abandon cable TV, replacing it with a system for receiving over the air (OTA) broadcasts and recording them on a digital video recorder (DVR). I picked Tablo over some of the other options because it seemed to offer a little more versatility than Tivo and was still pretty advanced and reliable. I ordered it from Best Buy and got it this week. At $200 it isn’t a horrible price up front, but there are other costs associated with it. One is they charge $5 per month for the programming guide which not only tells you what programs are coming up, but also helps you record them, record a series of shows, customize the start and stop times, etc. It seems essential to have the guide. You can also pay $50 per year for the guide or a one-time fee of $150 for lifetime guide support. I’m leaning towards doing the 1-year guide and if it works out and I keep using it, getting the lifetime. I don’t have to decide right away because it comes with the first month guide for free.

Also the Tablo does not connect to your TV’s HDMI port like a Tivo. Instead it connects to your home computer network via ethernet or wifi and you can watch shows on your phones or tablets via apps, cast shows to your TV via those devices, or gets apps for your TV. Unfortunately, Tablo seems mostly locked out of the TV app market so you have to buy a Roku, Apple TV, or Amazon Fire TV stick or box to have the apps and then play the shows on the TV.

Continue reading “Tablo OTA DVR”

As cable television has gotten more expensive, I have seriously thought about cutting the cord and doing without. Maybe the thing that bothers me the most is that cable companies charge you for broadcast channels that you can receive for free with an antenna. But I have suffered through cable because I love having a DVR and being able to record my favorite shows and watch them when I want, skipping over the commercials. The other really difficult part is that there are really only two internet companies (Comcast and AT&T) and both of them usually require you to bundle television with your internet in order to give you any kind of decent deal. For a while I had $20 internet from Comcast and TV through Dish for $60, then I got TV and internet from Comcast for $75, but lost almost all of my cable channels. Right now I am at the end of my contract with Comcast Xfinity. They want $80 for internet only, or they are willing to give me discounts that will come to $80 for a very basic cable and internet plan. So they were kind of throwing in cable for free. In fact, they threw in HBO, Showtime, and Starz for the last year. While I enjoy some of the movies, the only HBO show I watch regularly is Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. I never got into Game of Thrones or watched Westworld. Now in my second year, I can’t get HBO free for another year, though they were willing to offer Cinemax.
Continue reading “Cutting the Cord”

Recently a couple of things happened. First, I bought some Marvel movies from Redbox. They were pretty cheap at $4 each but they come in a small Redbox case, nothing like a regular Blu-ray. I thought maybe if I wanted I could put together a case for the movies, but I knew I had to watch the cost because I could get these same movies brand new from Disney Movie Club for about $9 and they would include the case, a digital copy and Disney Movie Rewards points worth about $1.50.

Continue reading “Building a Blu-ray”