John’s Blog-o-Rama

After all the the hubbub on the internet the past few days over Fiona Apple’s (unreleased, but nevertheless leaked) album Extraordinary Machine, I decided to download it. I was a fan of her first 2 albums, and I really like the new one also. She certainly has a different and original style, but it’s also a style that I think people like. Not sure why it hasn’t been released yet, whether its Sony’s call Fiona’s, but with its popularity on the web, look for that to happen soon.

The new album can be downloaded via Bittorrent from here.

As I’ve been programming my new DVR over the past few weeks, it has forced me to make a “favorite TV show” list so that I can record them to watch later. Since I already compiled the list, I though I’d share it here:

• CSI - My favorite show for the past few years. I love the use of science in the investigations, it’s well written, and the characters have a lot of personality
• Battlestar Galactica - I’ve been pleasantly surprised with this show. It’s much darker and a whole lot better than the original. A can’t miss for me very week.
• Medium - excellent new show about a woman with psychic powers. Well written and good drama
• American Idol - talent is way up this year
• The L Word - a very entertaining drama, plus a bunch of hot lesbians
• Law & Order: Original, SVU, and CI - hard to beat these
• Numb3ers - entertaining new show about an FBI agent and his genius mathematician brother. Hopefully CBS will move it to a better night so that it doesn’t get killed
• CSI:NY - darker than CSI and not as good, but at least it doesn’t have David Caruso
• Smallville - this season has a nice running plotline throughout the season. I’m hoping that Clark will finally learn to fly, and also hook it up with Lois Lane

The following have dropped off my list: The Apprentice 3 (no talent this season and the contestants are idiots), the O.C. (boring), and Without a Trace (no excitement any more).

So I gave in 2 weeks ago and exchanged my Time Warner HD cable box for a HD DVR. I’ve wanted this for a long time, but I had heard the early boxes weren’t very good, and I didn’t feel like adding the extra $10 per month to an already overinflated cable bill. But I finally got tired of missing my favorite shows and being held hostage of sitting through commercials. This has turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve made lately.

Time Warner gave me the new Scientific Atlanta 8300HD, and now I’m hooked. I love being able to schedule recordings and watch them later, and now I rarely watch live TV anymore since it’s a total waste of time…I don’t have patience for it. The only problem is that I can’t get recorded shows off the box and save them to my computer. I’d love to be able to archive the entire season of Battlestar Galactica, but no dice so far. I’m thinking of settings up a MythTV box, and then just re-recording shows I want to save from the DVR to Myth. Hopefully I’ll figure out or find a solution and talk about that in a later blog entry

I have to admit that I completely ignored the first 2 seasons of American Idol, and didn’t watch a single episode. I also ignored the 3rd season until the finals, and then I stopped watching after LaToya got voted off (Jasmine and Diana really weren’t good), since the talent was gone from the show. However, I’ve watched most of the current season, and I’m REALLY enjoying it. I think the talent is way up, and the performances are better overall. It’s really interesting to see who improves each week, and who really understands how to be a performer, not just a singer.

I have to say that I like watching the females a lot better than the men. However, this week too many of the performances were BORING, and their song choices sucked. Why do so many of them continue to sing slow/boring songs? The most interesting contestants, like Nadia, Jessica, and Bo seem to bring so much more energy than the others. I can’t wait to watch those ones each week, while some of the others just don’t seem to get it, and I fast forward through their performances with my DVR. I think that if I actually had singing talent and made it onto AI, I would hire some type of consultant to help me choose songs and improve my performances. It’s too important to do really well on the show, and too many of them seem to be blowing it. But then again, I guess that’s what adds the drama! I’m really looking forward to watching the finals to see how the men and women match up.