Wednesday, 29 January 2003
6:00pm
W
ell, the Super Bowl and all of its festivities have come and gone, and I have only just now recovered from it enough to do anything about it. As you probably could tell from watching on TV, the entire downtown area of San Diego was completely shut down and became one gigantic party, for most of the weekend. On saturday night, we tried to get in on some of that partying and failed. Parking down there... well, just forget it. There was no place to park for at least 2 miles around, so we had this idea to try riding the trolley in from Barrio Logan, thinking, hey, not too many people will be trying to get in from out that way, since most of the people riding the trolley in are probably coming from Old Town.
Now if you don't know, Barrio Logan is basically the ghetto. I figured there would not be any tourist type people trying to get on the trolley from there because of that. And, I was right, I guess, but it doesn't mean we were successful. You see, each trolley that came through that station was completely packed... like a Japanese subway! The only thing missing were the guys with the gloves shoving more people in.

I'm convinced that the guy smiling in this picture is beaming because he's gloating -- he's on the trolley, and we're not. By the time the third trolley came through like that, the crowd of people waiting to try to get on the trolley collectively let out an emphatic "What the fuck!?" and most everyone gave up. And so did we.
We did (oh I guess I should explain that "we" means Me, Clark, Cami and Jeff), for a brief time try to find parking. Along the way we found the secret location of the Maxim party. But anyway. Yeah. We were thwarted and we left, and we returned back to our place and watched a DVD instead. But at least we tried.

S
unday was the day of the big game, and the big party. Check out the invitation I made for the party! About 25 people were in my apartment, and yes, we did all fit. Jeff helped me rig up a temporary setup with my old widescreen TV in the kitchen getting a feed off of the HDTV receiver along with the big TV so that you could see the game from whereever you were... came in handy for me, at least, when I was in the kitchen making fried chicken during the third quarter!

<dvd review mode on>The HDTV broadcast proved to be a mixed bag. For most people in attendance, it was their first exposure to true HDTV, and I think ABC could have done a better job. Everyone was impressed with the clarity of the picture, but the intermittent audio dropouts (and we're talking once every 2 minutes or so), along with the complete signal loss that occurred several times through the game (and it wasn't just for us, this happened nationwide), kinda took away from my enjoyment of the game. The HDTV broadcasts of the playoff games from the two previous weekends that were done by CBS were far superior.
What was really awesome though, was the fact that most of the movie preview commercials were broadcast in full HDTV resolution with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio... our jaws hit the floor when that Matrix trailer came on! It was the first time I'd ever seen (or even heard of) commercials being broadcast in HDTV resolution, and it was quite amazing. It's just too bad that there aren't any easy (ie, cheap) ways to record it, or else I'd be watching that trailer over and over again.</dvdreview mode off>
But yes, there was tons of food, tons of beer, and tons of folks having tons of fun. Thanks to everyone who showed up and especially to anyone who helped out! Oh yeah, pics can be found at my giant repository of pics.

Thursday, 30 January 2003
11:59pm
A
djusting for inflation, it would cost $25 million to build the Six Million Dollar Man in 2003. Six million just doesn't go a very long way in bionics these days, I guess.

Friday, 31 January 2003
11:59pm
T
oday was a fantastic day to go out for a drive. I had to drive up to Encinitas to take some photos for a web design client of mine, so I thought, hey, I'll take a nice drive in this nice 80 degree weather up the nice coast. Well, I decided to take the freeway on the way up and the coastal route back down, and well, the freeway wasn't too good of an idea, as it was jammed with traffic. But the coastal route drive back down was well worth it! Check out the pics at the Giant Repository of Pics.
I managed to get my hands on the actual HDTV transport stream that was broadcast during the superbowl... well, just the part with the Matrix sequels preview, which really, was the only part I was looking for. If you're looking to see some high quality images, or looking for a new background pic, or want to see how ridiculously good the capability of HDTV is, click on the thumbnails below to get a pics at the full resolution of the 720p broadcast (1280x720). At this resolution, HDTV runs at a progressive scan *60* frames per second! Of course the original film is only 24fps, but whatever. Anyway, enjoy these:


And finally today... I first saw this last weekend when Kenny and I went out to Barona Casino, and saw it again tonight parked in front of the auto detailing shop. Either it's the same truck, or someone went really far out of their way to make it look like the same truck as the one in Ocean's 11!! Click for a larger pic!