Nostalgia.
Instagram: Nostalgia.
Nostalgia.
The Year in TV (2013)
2013 was an… interesting year in TV. American networks continued to churn out complete crap by the truckload, but networks across the world put out a variety of fresh, innovative new shows… along with a bunch of crap, too. But there’s plenty of great stuff out there if you know where to look. And this year’s TV roundup contains a few surprises: two shows from New Zealand, and the first French language show to appear on my list!
First, you’ll first find the list of my favorite new shows. As always, remember that the list is only for new shows, so old favorites like Breaking Bad and Mad Men aren’t on the list. After that, there’s a list of “worth a watch” shows, a list of shows that tried but failed, a section about miniseries, a tribute to shows that have left the air, and various odds and ends.
THE 12 BEST NEW SHOWS ON TV
#12: Wonderland (Network Ten Australia) – This is my guilty pleasure of the year. It’s a light, breezy primetime soap about a group of friends who live in an oceanview building in Sydney called “Wonderland”. One of the main characters, Tom (Michael Dorman), can’t seem to commit to anything, be it a career or a woman. The only thing he seems to truly love is his 1964 Ford. In the first episode, Tom and his friend Steve bet that Tom will not sleep with a female roommate for 12 months, else Tom will have to give Steve his beloved car. But then Steve’s sister Miranda shows up needing a place to live. Tom obliges. Can Tom keep his end of the bet? And what will Miranda say when she finds out about the bet? And what happens when control freak Grace meets the handsome, easygoing Carlos from Brazil? And how will Collete and Rob survive once she admits to having a one night stand? See? It’s all soap opera, but for some reason – attractive cast members playing generally decent human beings? – I was totally sucked in to this. And I make no apologies for it!
#11: Hannibal (NBC) – I put Hannibal on the list because it fascinates me. We know “harder” swear words and casual nudity are strictly forbidden by the FCC. But Hannibal proves that while you can’t show boobies on network TV, you can certainly show boobies being chopped in to pieces… and maybe even cooked and eaten, too. I’m also a fan of Bryan Fuller (creator of Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies). While Hugh Dancy is officially the “star” of the show – as Special Agent Will Graham, an FBI academy lecturer and expert on serial killers who re-creates crime scenes in his mind – we all know that Mads Mikkelsen is really the star as Hannibal Lecter. Mads underplays Lecter; at least compared to Anthony Hopkins’ version. In fact, if all we knew of Lector was Mad’s performance, we’d be in for a bit of a shock later on. But while the writing is pretty good (especially for a show on US network TV), it really is surprisingly graphic. I mean, I’m hardly a “prude” and have seen my share of horror films over the years.. but this show even shocked me!
#10: Sleepy Hollow (Fox) – This is possibly the silliest show to come on TV in ages, yet it somehow works. In the show’s universe, Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow doesn’t exist. Instead, a man named Ichabod Crane moves to New York from England in colonial times and switches his allegiance to the American patriots. He is killed on the battlefield by a mysterious Hessian fighter, who Crane manages to behead just before collapsing. Crane rises from the grave 220 years later, and has a friend in Westchester County police lieutenant Abbie Mills: on the same night Crane awakes, Mills sees her mentor. Sheriff August Corbin, killed by the same horseman that Crane had beheaded. And so begins a series which is a delightful mix of the National Treasure movies (Founding Fathers, Freemasonry, esoteric symbols) and The X-Files (mysterious, supernatural bad guys). Hey, it ain’t deep TV, but it’s a heck of a lot of fun!
RANDOM CUTIE: Lauren Mayberry
Lauren Mayberry is the lead singer of the Scottish synthpop band CHVRCHES. I personally don’t find her “stunning” or “sexy”, but she can be awfully cute, in a pixie sort of way:
What’s even better than her looks is her mind. Mayberry wasn’t sure her music career would take off, so she got a bachelor of laws degree* and a masters in journalism. She even won a prestigious award from the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland in 2010 for an article she wrote about body piercing practices (read it in this PDF). More recently, Mayberry wrote this piece in The Guardian about the misogyny she has to deal with online with Twitter and Facebook (and no, she’s not being hyper-sensitive about “I think you’re pretty!” tweets; most of the example tweets she gives are pretty disgusting).
She’s also quite smart about the music business. For one thing, the band liked the name “Churches”, but thought it would be difficult to Google for, so Mayberry proposed the alternative spelling. And it took them forever and a day to get a record contract because the band held out for a label that would give them considerable creative freedom. Mayberry says:
“You see so many bands regress and become like children, getting told what to do. I’m not in the business of telling people ‘DIY or die’ but I do think it’s important to be as hands-on with what you’re doing as possible. Sometimes if you don’t take the easy option it’ll pay dividends in the long run…. One guy came to a show, and was like: ‘You’re going to be huge. I can see it in my mind’s eye, we could make you the next Pixie Lott.’ I did an internal scream and ran away…. I guess at the end of the day I want to be viewed as a musician. Maybe I am super-paranoid about it. But after this is all done, I want to be able to say that we did it in the way we wanted to do it.”
But perhaps the BEST thing of all is that, despite being one of the tiniest singers I’ve ever seen, Mayberry is NOT a vegetarian. She even posted her recipe for beef and chorizo chili on a website after being asked for it. Sweet!
More pictures after the jump!
Tip of the Day
This might sound completely obvious to some, but if you’re upgrading a perfectly functional electronic device, put all the electric adapters and cables in a gallon size Ziploc bag immediately after taking it apart.
For example, you might have a perfectly good 802.11n router that you’ve decided to replace with a brand-new 802.11ac router. Maybe you want faster wireless speeds from 802.11ac, or maybe 802.11ac will provide better range and speed with your home’s construction. Whatever the reason, you still have a router that works, you just want something better. So when you set up the new router, put the old router in a large Ziploc bag along with its power brick and any cable(s).
The reason I mention this is because I’m often amazed by how many people have a big box of adapters and cables, and in most cases have no idea which adapter goes with which device. I suppose they’re used to the “old days”, when companies actually went to the trouble to put their logos on things like power bricks. Nowadays, this is somewhat rare. Of the last two routers I owned, one had the name of the adapter’s manufacturer on it, while the other one had no manufacturer name at all, just the legally-required electrical info. And the power brick for my Dell netbook is actually branded by LiteOn.
There’s another benefit to doing this if you are your family’s “IT Guy”. Having a router or switch ready to go in a plastic bag means you can just “grab it and go” if there’s some kind of IT emergency that needs your help. More than once I’ve had to reach in my closet and get my trusty old Linksys WRT54GL to help a neighbor or family member diagnose a connectivity issue!
Instagram: Lisa doesn’t like IPA!
Lisa doesn’t like IPA!
Happy Thanksgiving!
On this holiday, let’s remember what’s truly important in our lives:
Instagram: A judge in California temporarily shut down the Sriracha plant……
A judge in California temporarily shut down the Sriracha plant… STOCK UP!
The Hottest Brainiacs
They say the largest sex organ is the brain. If you find brain power sexy, this post is for you! Here are some of the hottest brainiacs alive today:
Dr. Kathlyn M. Cooney
Wikipedia says that Kara Cooney “is an Egyptologist and Assistant Professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture at UCLA. She was awarded a PhD in 2002 by Johns Hopkins University for Near Eastern Studies. She was part of an archaeological team excavating at the artisans’ village of Deir el Medina in Egypt, as well as Dahshur and various tombs at Thebes.” She has also appeared in the Discovery Channel series Out of Egypt and Egypt’s Lost Queen.
Suzannah Lipscomb
Wikipedia says that Suzannah Lipscomb “is a British historian, academic and broadcaster specialising in the sixteenth century”. She has done a lot of radio and TV work, including a series called Hidden Killers of the Victoria Home, which she wrote herself. She has written several books, and is a regular contributor to History Today, BBC History Magazine and The Daily Telegraph. I especially like her nose piercing, which makes her look slightly edgy.
Danica McKellar
Sure, you know her as Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years. Unlike many child actors, however, McKellar didn’t disappear into a pile of coke and hookers. She went to UCLA and graduated summa cum laude in 1998 with a degree in mathematics. She co-authored an academic paper named “Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller models on Z2“. I don’t even understand the title! She has gone on to write four books encouraging girls to take an interest in math: Math Doesn’t Suck, Kiss My Math, Hot X: Algebra Exposed and Girls Get Curves: Geometry Takes Shape.
The Rarest of the Rare
In 1967, a perfectly ordinary apartment building in Chicago started undergoing perfectly ordinary renovations. One perfectly ordinary day, a perfectly ordinary plumber started tearing down a perfectly ordinary brick wall. And, behind the wall, he found a completely unusual motorcycle.
The building’s elderly owner sheepishly admitted that his son had stolen the bike before leaving for the Army in World War I. His son died in combat, and it’s not known if the old man hid the bike in the wall out of shame (that his son had stolen it) or out of depression (that his son had died). All that’s known for sure is that the bike had been trapped behind the wall for 50 years and had license plates from the year 1917 on it.
The motorcycle had the name “Traub” on it. There is no company named Traub known to have manufactured motorcycles in the United States (or anywhere else) at that time, And believe me, people have really researched it. But perhaps that’s all well and good, because almost all the parts of the motorcycle were made by hand.
The engine is a handmade 80 cubic-inch flathead engine made by sand casting. The pistons are also handmade. According to the bike’s current owner, the overall machining on the bike parts was “simply years ahead of their time”. The bike, which can easily reach 85 mph (137 km/h), has a three-speed transmission, perhaps the first of its kind. And despite having both German and American parts, the transmission’s design is completely unique. And the rear brakes use a system never seen before (or since) on American-built motorcycles. Some of the screws used on the bike are uncommon to motorcycles, while others that control things like oil level must be turned by hand, indicating that the person (or persons) who built the bike had to be an expert with engines and\or machining parts.
If none of that made any sense to you, then imagine this: the most popular car in the United States in 1916 was the Model T. Model Ts look like this:
Now, Imagine someone, somewhere building a car by hand in 1916 that looks like this:
Now you can see what a truly amazing piece of engineering the Traub motorcycle really is.
No one knows who built the Traub or why, It’s known that the bike was bought by a Chicago area bicycle shop owner named Torillo Tacchi shortly after it was discovered. Tacchi sold it to a Hollywood stuntman named Bud Ekins in the 1970s (Bud was in town working on the original Blues Brothers movie at the time). Ekins sold it to a motorcycle collector named Richard Morris, who in turn sold it on to Dale Walksler, owner and curator of the Wheels Through Time Museum in Maggie Valley, NC. The Traub has been on display there ever since.
If you’d like to read more about the Traub (especially if you like the technical side of things), check out this post or this post.
Converting MP4 to MP3 with VLC
Have you ever wanted to convert a video file to an audio file? Like, maybe you wanted a small clip from TV show to use as a ringtone, or maybe your favorite band was on Conan or Kimmel and you wanted an audio version of their performance for your iPod or smartphone?
There are dozens of apps out there that claim to do that, but most of those websites seem scammy, as if the download is malware or the ads might infect your computer with some kind of virus. And even the legit apps often have some kind of toolbar or search engine they want to install.
But did you know that VLC, the malware-free Swiss Army knife of video players, can also convert video to audio?
Just open VLC and choose “Media” > “Convert/Save”:
In the window that appears, click “Add” and choose the video file(s) you want to convert:
Next, click the down arrow on the “Convert/Save” button and choose “Convert”:
On the next window, make sure the “Convert” radio button is selected, then choose the type of audio file you wish to create: OGG, MP3, MP4, FLAC or CD (WAV):
Choose an output destination, then press “Start”. VLC will appear to play the file: the main VLC window will appear, and the progress bar will move as if the video is playing at high speed, but no video will be displayed. When it reaches the end of the video, the conversion will be complete. You can then edit the audio in Adobe Audition (spendy, but awesome) or Audacity (free, but not as good as Audition).
By default, VLC will convert the audio to a 128kbps mp3. This is fine for things like ringtones.
If you’d like to convert at higher quality, select “Audio – MP3” at the previous step and then click the Options icon (the icon with the screwdriver and wrench). Click the “Audio Codec” tab:
Here you can adjust the bitrate as necessary. However, note that increasing the bitrate will not improve the converted file if the new file’s bitrate exceeds the original file. For instance, if the audio in the original file is 192kbps, editing the bitrate to 320kbps won’t make it sound any better; it’ll just make a larger file. You could, however, change VLC’s default bitrate from the 128kbps to 192kbps to get the best quality from the converted file.