Thursday June 19, 2003

Have I mentioned how much I love Futurama lately? Maybe the impending cancellation of the show has raised my obsession with it. The last few weeks devoted fans have had the pleasure of enjoying 3 consecutive new episodes. If you've followed the show from the beginning, you know how rare this is thanks to FOX's terrible scheduling and complete lack of appreciation for the show. My devotion to the show prompted my most recent technology purchase. See I've been enjoying the Season 1 DVDs which I received as a birthday present, but I recently learned that Season 2 and Season 3 are already available in Europe. Season 2 isn't scheduled for release here in the states for several months with no release date set for Season 3. As a die-hard Futurama fan, I knew there was no way I could wait that long to have them in my collection. So, what could I do? Simple, buy a region-free DVD player that could play Region 2 DVDs. After some searching, I came across the Norcent DP-300 player. At only $40 A/R, it was hard to pass up this deal. I was able to make it region-free with a simple remote-sequence. Once I imported the DVDs from Amazon UK, I was in business! The unit also handles NTSC/PAL conversion so everything looks great too. I've been very impressed with the DVD player so far. It also plays CD-R, DVD-R, MP3 and VCDs. So, I can burn the latest episodes downloaded off the net to CD and watch them with it too. Now I can stop using my Playstation 2 for DVD-viewing purposes, which it admittedly is not very good at. I also picked up a really cool Bender action-figure from a local comic bookstore. It looks great in my office and may just help me turn some coworkers on to the show! I couldn't resist buying Family Guy, Volume 1 DVD either. It's a notch below Futurama and The Simpsons, but it's extremely funny. It's definitely a different kind of humor, but I enjoy it just the same. Looks like I've got enough animated shows to last through the summer!    10:41 PM EST | Post comments (0)

Tuesday June 03, 2003

Went to Atlanta last weekend to visit Swathi and Anand. I had the added bonus of meeting Mira for lunch on Saturday. I think the last time we had met was at Swathi's wedding last July. It was really great seeing her again. She's been out of town a lot lately for work, so I was happy she happened to be in town this weekend. After lunch, we caught a matinee of Matrix Reloaded. I was pretty happy with the experience and the movie more or less lived up to my expectations. I felt that action sequences, while technically excellent, were a bit longer than necessary. I really enjoyed the plot-twist at the end though. It kind of reminded me of the ending to Asimov's classic, The End of Eternity, with its causality loop. Likewise, the love of a woman by the protagonists plays a large part in determining the outcome in both stories. We patiently sat through the credits to see the preview of Revolution at the end. They didn't show too much, but it looks promising and I hope they can provide a fitting conclusion to the series. We went to see Finding Nemo on Sunday. Beautiful animation, touching story and great voice-acting make for another animated classic from Pixar. There are definitely worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.    10:51 PM EST | Post comments (0)

Thursday May 15, 2003

I went to Atlanta today with a few others from my department to visit a couple of the clinics participating in the NLST study. We wanted to troubleshoot some of the transfer problems we were having to our server. We left around 8AM and reached the first clinic around 11:30 Atlanta time. The visit went well and I think I was able to pinpoint some of the problems we've been having. After lunch, we visited the 2nd clinic up in Alpharetta. The tech guys there were really helpful and spent several hours with me answering my questions. They also showed my extensive logs on their side which should be invaluable in my troubleshooting of our server problems. I really learned a lot about DICOM just by talking to them. The more I learn about it, the more it fascinates me. The nice thing about this job is that I'm surrounded by a lot of smart people who are always willing to share their knowledge. You just have to know how to ask the right questions. We probably spent a good 4 hours at the Alpharetta clinic, so we managed to miss most of the rush-hour traffic by the time we headed back to Birmingham. My colleagues wanted to stop on they way home and purchase some lottery tickets. I never purchased one before in all my years in Atlanta, so I thought I'd join in. Their announcing the winning numbers tommorow night. If by some miracle I do win, you'll definitely hear about it here!    11:14 PM EST | Post comments (0)

Forgot to mention that Anand and Swathi generously gave me the Futurama, Vol. 1 DVD as a birthday present. On a sadder note, Fox has officially cancelled Futurama. How they can let such a brilliant show die, while they trot out one pathetic reality show after another is beyond me. I really felt the show surpassed The Simpsons in quality. I LOVE The Simpsons, but even the most ardent fan will admit the quality has slipped in recent seasons. I think this because Matt Groening has devoted his creative energies to making Futurama a success. It really shows in the quality of the show and also features some of the finest animation on TV. So Futurama fans, support the show by buying the excellent season DVDs as they become available and tune into Cartoon Network to see Futurama on their Adult Swim lineup. Here's hoping another network has the good sense to pick up the show and give it life again. But if not, thanks Matt Groening, David Cohen and everyone else involved for hundreds of hours of great laughs! As a final salute, I've listed my top 5 favorite Futurama episodes. I have to give special props to The Luck of the Fryrish, which is probably the finest half-hour of TV I've ever seen. Seriously, it's that good! 1. Luck of the Fryrish 2. Parasites Lost 3. Roswell that Ends Well 4. GodFellas 5. Amazon Women in the Mood    11:04 PM EST | Post comments (0)