Ted's Blog

Maybe since Star Wars came out, I always thought it would be neat to have original movie posters, but I never got any. Posters are kind of hard to deal with: You can stick them to a wall like in high school or college, but better if they are framed. At the movie theaters, the posters are backlit which makes them look like they glow or are on a TV or movie screen. Some home theater people get these backlit boxes for movie posters. And Disney Movie Rewards used to let you buy original theatrical posters with DMR points, which a lot of people did, including me. I got Michael a Guardians of the Galaxy poster once and last year on a really good sale, I got a Toy Story 4 poster for only 225 points, worth about $2.25. A few years ago I was about to lose all of my Regal Theater points, so I used them to get a “free” Doctor Strange poster, but then had to pay $8.75 shipping. I saw on the internet that some people would build a backlit frame out of wood, fluorescent bulbs, frosted plexiglass and a picture frame to go on top of it. You could make one for about $100 in parts. Or you could buy one for about $300, which I was not going to do. If I could build my own it wouldn’t be so much like spending $100, but like saving $200. Sometimes you have to spend money to save money.

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In 2016, Disney released two feature length animated movies, Moana and Zootopia. Both were very good and both were nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, which Zootopia won. I gave Zootopia an A and Moana an A-, so I felt like the Academy made the right decision. But there is a lot of debate and as time goes on it seems like Zootopia has maybe started to take a backseat to Moana. Moana had some legitimately very good songs, not least of which was “How Far I’ll Go,” but also “Where You Are” and “You’re Welcome.” The first of that was nominated for an Oscar but lost to a song from La La Land, which was a tough break since most years I think “How Far I’ll Go” would win. Moana also had a great story about a girl (kind of a princess, she is the Chief’s daughter and heir apparent) finding her place and adding a bunch of nice cultural flourishes regarding Pacific islander culture, with some strong messages about family and determination, plus some comedy to keep things light.
Continue reading “Moana vs. Zootopia”

About two years ago I switched my web host to HostGator. HostGator is really cheap initially, so I got a 3-year intro deal that was pretty amazing for essentially unlimited shared web hosting. It was unlimited enough that even Jeb got in on it and we host under the same account now.

It had been over a year since I had last updated the Mediawiki software that runs the Flashlight Wiki and Mediawiki makes it a pain to do an update by having to manually copy files, updates extensions and skins, and maybe update the main configuration file (whereas with WordPress you just push a button in the dashboard). So I was running version 1.30 of Mediawiki and now they had released 1.34. I downloaded 1.34, figured out which extensions I needed that weren’t included in the standard installation, downloaded those, pared down the skins that didn’t seem to be supported anymore and then copied over my images and settings file. Tried it out and it said Mediawiki requires PHP version 7.2.9 and I was running 7.1. PHP is something installed by the webhost, not the end user, so that means HostGator. In my HostGator control panel, I can choose which version of PHP I want to run, but my only choices were the default of 5.6 or 7.0 or 7.1. Their technical support information said you should be able to choose 7.2, but I didn’t see that as a pick.
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When I got my first Android phone a couple of years ago, I wound up using an app called Writer Plus to keep track of my notes. It is pretty simple, but allows use of folders to keep things organized and some formatting using markdown. I was able to use an app called Dropsync to back up the text files to Dropbox (I think the Dropbox app does this now, but Dropsync works fine).

On Friday, I got a line on the screen of my fairly new phone that wouldn’t go away, and one way to troubleshoot that was to wipe the phone. So I backed up my notes folder to my SD card before wiping, but I forgot to back up my passwords file, an encrypted keepass file. Then of course I needed that file, but it seemed to be gone. That didn’t fix the screen (I hope it’s not from my homemade Clorox wipes), I sent it in under warranty (hopefully the will replace it since the glass cover over the camera is cracked too). I just had to move my SIM card and SD card over to the old phone and I was back in business pretty quickly.

It still bothered me to lose my passwords, so I looked on Dropbox to see if I had put a copy there. It turns out that the keepass file had been stored in my Notes folder which was backed up daily to Dropbox, so I actually had the latest file all along (not sure why the Find feature didn’t work, but maybe I was looking in the wrong place). Pretty clever of me to leave it there where it would be backed up, but it makes sense because I used to keep the passwords in an encrypted note on my iPod Touch, so it was note-related in a sense.

I first joined the Disney Movie Club in 2016, getting 5 Blu-rays for $1 and having to buy 3 more at full price. While I have been able to get a lot of other movies for $5.99 down to $1, Disney movie prices don’t usually go on very good sales (Black Friday being one of the few exceptions), but DMC lets you pay on average $7-9 per Blu-ray instead of the usual $18-25 at stores. And Disney has great movies with new ones coming out all the time including from Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel.

This week I cancelled my fourth membership and a couple of days later enrolled again, picking five more movies plus getting my first full price commitment for only $12 and my second for $20. That left me with one more commitment and the next day I pre-ordered Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker for $25 (doesn’t come out until March 31, plus it is temporarily marked down $5 for being new, and you can’t ever get Star Wars movies through an enrollment, only as a full price commitment). So that is 8 movies for $58 plus tax, less than $8 each on average.

More about the best way to join here.
Continue reading “DMC Enrollment 5”