Sunday, October 18, 2026
Saturday, October 17, 2026
8K TVs Are Stupid
When 4K TVs came out, some people complained that you can't see that level of detail...
Much depends upon how big your screen is, how far you sit from it, and whether you are John Coffey. My eyesight has never been 20/20, but even with the corrective lens I got during my cataract surgery, which was a huge improvement, I see more like 20/25. So when 4K first came out, I had a hard time telling the difference between 4K (which is just a marketing name for 2160p) and 1080p.
Although surgery vastly improved my distance vision, it made it harder for me to see up close. I can't see anything up close without reading glasses, and getting the right focus for playing chess has been tricky. I liked my old vision because I needed glasses just for distance, but now I need strong reading glasses to see my phone.
For a large-screen TV, a 4K display makes sense. However, I have two 27-inch monitors, and for these, I feel that 1440p is ideal. On a 27-inch monitor, 1080p is not as good because you can see individual pixels when sitting close, but 4K makes all the Windows and Mac icons look small, so you have to artificially enlarge them to be able to see anything comfortably.
I don't think that a person is going to gain anything by having 4K on a 27-inch monitor. There is a limit to what our eyes can see. Although it doesn't make much difference, 4K requires more overhead from the graphics hardware when playing games, so you can get a better frame rate with 1440p. Although you could run a game in 1440p on a 4K monitor, it is less than ideal because the video output doesn't match the pixels on the screen, requiring the computer or monitor to scale the images.
My iMac is 5K, but I run it at half resolution, which is 1440p, and I am more comfortable with it that way. For people who do video or photo editing, 4K and 5K are better.
On a smaller computer monitor, such as one measuring 19 or 20 inches, I think that 1080p might be fine. Most laptops have displays with resolutions higher than 1080p, but because of their size, I don't think that they need to.
Because of the small screen and keyboard, I don't recommend using a laptop as your main computer, but I have used a laptop with an external screen and keyboard.
Wednesday, October 7, 2026
William Shatner on AI
William Shatner is 95 years old.
BTW, Mel Brooks is 100 years old and is doing a sequel to Spaceballs that will come out when he is 101.
Sunday, October 4, 2026
Monday, September 28, 2026
Star Trek Just KILLED Another Series...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7Niz3dDkmw
It very much appeared that the show Strange New Worlds was leading up to a possible reboot of the original Star Trek series, because it recast actors for Kirk, Kirk's brother, Uhura, Spock, Scotty, and Doctor Boyce who was in the very first Star Trek pilot.
This would have been great.
Friday, September 25, 2026
Strange New Worlds season 4 episode 8 Orders of Magnitude
Strange New Worlds season 4, episode 8, Orders of Magnitude is an amazing episode. It is a standalone episode.
It is the 4th highest rated episde of the entire series on IMDB. The preceding and following episodes are extremely low-rated.
Thursday, September 17, 2026
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Friday, September 11, 2026
Tuesday, September 8, 2026
Monday, September 7, 2026
The $10,000 Trinitron
No matter how good this TV was in 1981, the technology was still limited to 480i. I'm not sure if 480p was even possible at the time. When DVDs were introduced in 1996, they were still 480i.
No matter how high-tech the TV claimed to be, it still had the same fundamental limitations.
The computers that existed in the early 1980s generally output a 240p signal, although a few machines had options for higher resolutions.
In the 1990s, a friend of my mother's was showing off her 33-inch CRT TV. She asked me how much I thought it cost. I correctly guessed $3,000. Soon, however, that expensive TV would become obsolete as HDTV came along. Some of the final CRT televisions could accept an HD signal before flat-screen TVs became common.
In my final years in Utah, I saw someone giving away a 33-inch TV on the curb. I thought maybe I could use it as a video game display. It was so heavy—probably around 150 pounds—that a friend and I nearly killed ourselves trying to lift it together. I eventually had to give it away before I moved.
Shortly after arriving in Indiana, I saw another 33-inch TV sitting on a curb. I convinced the owner to haul it to my house. Again, I wanted to use it as a video game display, but I eventually gave it away. A young couple wanted it for their son's video game system.
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
Why Everything You Watch Sucks After Season One
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqoniQcpm04&t=41s
This video is spot on describing how political agendas destroyed Resident Alien.
Other shows have suffered similar fates. It has been a really bad trend.
The first season was a blast. The alien is very intelligent, but socially awkward, so he tries his best to blend in.
Tuesday, September 1, 2026
Monday, August 31, 2026
Eli Wallach was a MUCH better Mr. Freeze
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwKvIV8NsvI
It is hard to imagine Eli Wallach from The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly being on Batman.
Monday, August 17, 2026
Hayden Panettiere, star of 'Heroes' and 'Nashville,' dies at 36
https://abcnews.com/US/hayden-panettiere-dies-36/story?id=135698473
She was very good in 'Heroes'. The series was great in the first season, but the second season faltered quite a bit. It lost any momentum that it had. The show recovered in later seasons, but was still cancelled.
Sunday, August 16, 2026
YouTube Shorts are going to change
I don't really like YouTube shorts for a few reasons.
1. The videos repeat over and over.
2. I can't easily add shorts to a playlist. They used to allow this, but they stopped. It might still work on the iPhone YouTube app.
In a web browser, I found a workaround, by changing the address to look like this:
3. Shorts are designed to get people addicted by getting them to scroll all day long.
Friday, August 14, 2026
The last 2 humans alive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YTs_N18yD4
I've seen part of this show. When I get back on Hulu, maybe after Black Friday, I would like to finish it.
Tuesday, August 11, 2026
Sunday, August 9, 2026
Israel Kamakawiwoʻole: The Voice of Hawaii That Touched the World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
I assume that most people have heard this version at some point. It is beautiful:
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Saturday, July 25, 2026
Friday, July 17, 2026
Sunday, June 28, 2026
Monday, June 22, 2026
What It Was REALLY Like Working With Chevy Chase?
Bill Murray about Chevy Chase: "When you become famous, you've got like a year or two where you act like a real a--hole... It happens to everybody. You've got like two years to pull it together — or it's permanent."
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