Baggas' Blog

Thought I’d mention a nifty piece of Mac OS software I’ve been using. Read on if you have a Mac and either an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3… if you don’t have those you might as well save time and stop reading this now!…

Right, now that we’ve got rid of those non-Mac and non-Gaming console people we can continue with Rivet. This program basically enables your connected games console to access your music, video, and photo libraries on your mac. These consoles talk nicely to Windows out of the box but unfortunately they are not designed with Mac OS in mind. Rivet takes care of this smoothly and easily. Set it to load when your Mac starts-up and it just sits in the menu bar. There are no extra steps – right away I was able to browse and play my media content from my Mac on the Xbox 360 and PS3**. It’s very handy if you have a large collection of video files (home movies, TV shows, movies, whatever) as they can be immediately accessed and played on the console. Podcasts (video and audio) are handled as well, and all your iTunes playlists show up too. This last feature is very useful at this time of the year so I can pump my gigabytes of Christmas Mp3s ‘all through the house’

So if you have a Mac and a console download the trial version of Rivet and give it a go.. there’s a good chance that, like me, you’ll soon be going back for the full version too.

** Yes, I now have both consoles. I was in the market for a Bluray player and was soon convinced (despite my initial hesitation) that a PS3 was the way to go.. As far as gaming consoles go I still like the Xbox better – the interface is nicer and easier to navigate, and there is a better and easier to find selection of downloadable demos which the kids like playing. The Xbox360 interface has been hugely improved over the last year or so and the new avatar section is really good. I believe it’s due for another big update any day now as well…

I can’t really contrast the actual games though as I haven’t played much on the Ps-3 – my feeling is that the graphics and games are comparable. I did enjoy stuffing around with this funny game called Little Big Planet on the Ps3 last night. Oh and it has this interesting feature called Playstation Home which is similar to Second Life.. something to explore when I’m bored… but mostly the PS3 has become our home theatre media hub – great for playing Blurays, DVDs, and streaming videos and music (via Rivet). One big plus is it’s a lot quieter than the Xbox which makes it better for that application.  So there’s my haphazrd initial review of the PS3

*** Hey, and if you know me and have an xbox 360 or  PS3 let me know who you are and maybe we can add each other as ‘friends’ Presently I have no PS3 friends and only some random people on Xbox that I played a game against like once a few years ago, so having some people that I actually know would be cool. (here ends the pathetic appeal for friends..lol)

It’s a quiet day at work and I haven’t posted here in some time so thought I’d share some of my musings.
Today I find myself thinking about Blu-Ray…

For a number of reasons I have held off getting a Blu-Ray player up to now but it seems to me the time is probably right to get one.

• Blu-Ray is clearly the dominant only HD movie disc format following the demise of HD-DVD (I still have a few of those along with my X-box 360 HD-DVD add-on). There does not seem to be any obvious successor in the pipeline so Blu-Ray will probably be with us for a few years to come
• Most shops have a decent sized Blu-Ray section now with an increasing selection of titles at better prices. This is only going to improve further. Nowadays if I’m thinking about buying a DVD I’m always reluctant to do so knowing there is a better higher-def alternative out there. When I get the new Star Trek movie or a new U2 concert disc, I’d rather it was the best possible experience available..
• Blu-Ray players now seem to be coming down in price, and the strong Australian dollar is only going to help that

So I’m starting to look at Blu-Ray players – might use up some of the credit on my interest-free store card account thingo as I shouldn’t really be spending disposable income on that sort of thing at present (so I’ll spend 2011 or 2012’s instead! lol)

Any suggestions of good, cheapish Blu-Ray players would be appreciated… I’m intending to stay away from the Sony Playstation 3 as we already have 2 games consoles in our home and don’t want to complicate things by adding another – plus I believe they don’t work with universal IR remotes.

Hopefully I’ll get a Blu-Ray player soon and the Santa can bring a few discs this Christmas…

I’ve seen noted before the eerie similarities between the current US presidential race and the final season of The West Wing (my all time favourite show). Today I discovered an interesting Australian blog about US politics, Kan Da Shan, who in this post, goes into some detail listing the similarities…

Doctor Who to boost church popularity – yet another news story about how a church is trying to tap into modern culture to boost flagging attendance among the ‘youth’ – these stories always make the church leaders seem like out of touch old fuddy duddies sitting in a room somewhere.

Interesting choice though – I haven’t seen much of the recent Dr Who (although I used to love it as a kid) but it strikes me as being one of the least spiritual/theistic sci-fi series out there. Apparently (according to the comments) Richard Dawkins will be featuring on the series soon so that says a lot. Better to use Star Wars, or Star Trek, or the new Battlestar Galactica  – which is deeply infused with religious elements, and is a brilliantly conceived and produced show.

I’ve never been much of a trekkie – missed the last few movies and never watched any of the TV series after the one with Pickard. But the upcoming movie produced by J J Abrams does sound like it might be worth watching. And a particularly interesting thing about this movie is that they have the actor who plays Heroes’ Sylar (the coolest, and scariest, TV villain in years) to play a young Spock. Judging from these grainy pictures he’s a pretty good choice for the role.

Speaking of Heroes, Jen and I have finished re-watching season 1 on HDDVD and are now working our way through season 2. It took a little while to get into it while they were introducing all these new characters but eight episodes in and it’s looking as good as ever. I especially enjoyed the ‘Hiro in Japan’ storyline. My big frustration now is that we only have one episode left to watch and we will be up to date! After a few weeks of watching Heroes several nights a week, having to endure the pain of waiting for one episode every week will be agony, especially if the screenwriter’s strike results in a big mid-season gap.

I normally try and avoid shows like Today Tonight and A Current Affair like the plague. I invariably find myself irritated and occaisionally yelling at the TV because of the low-brow one-sided tabloid journalism. And how many times can they rehash the same stories – the neighbours/tennants from hell, petrol prices, kids out of control, miracle weight loss cures, how to feed a family for $10 etc etc etc? But sometimes I just don’t get to the TV off button in time and find myself watching part of the show. The last 2 nights I have had the misfortune of catching Today Tonight and their story on how the sinister evil cult of Hillsong church is manipulating Australian Idol. Like all their stories this was incredibly one-sided and skewed – they didn’t give Hillsong or any of their 20,000 or so memebers a chance to respond. Rather they gave time last night to a bunch of commentators who didn’t really seem to know what they were talking about, and tonight to a disgruntled seemingly defacto couple of ex-Hillsong members of fairly limited IQ. Hillsong may not be perfect, and people may have some legitimate criticisms of some aspects of their theology, however the media portrayals of them as some kind of brainwashing cult and money machine are grossly unfair and are an insult to the thousands of people who attend that church and many thousands more who are associated with them one way or another.

Specifically, the allegations related to Australian Idol are that Hillsong have deliberately infiltrated people into the competition and then (shock, horror) advised their congregation that they might want to vote for them.

To tackle the first allegation, it does seem that a disproportionate number of successful contestants on ‘Idol’ are Christian and have some kind of connection/affinity with Hillsong, however they are inaccurate when they suggest that all of these people are Hillsong plants. Most are not members at all, but attend other churches. One blatant error in their story was their claim that the original Idol winner Guy Sebastian was a Hillsong member, when in fact he went to Paradise Church in Adelaide (the home of PlanetShakers). The reason why there are so many Christians on Idol is much more straightforward – contemporary churches are an excellent nursery for musical talent. Where else in our society are so many people given an opportunity to use and develop their musical talents but in Christian worship? Even of those who work hard to form a band and persue a musical career, few would play to audiences of several hundred or more every week but this is commonplace for church musicians. And the example per-excellence of this is Hillsong church, who are at the cutting edge of innovation and excellence in Christian music in Australia, if not the world. So don’t be surprised if, in a musical competition, a disproportionate number of contestants hail from the breeding ground of Christian churches, especially those in the style of Hillsong. Churches don’t need to plant or infiltrate a competition like Australian Idol – contestants will spring up naturally from such a nuturing musical environment. For millienia the church has been the soil and the inspiration for music – why should things be any different today?

Secondly, the charges that it is somehow wrong or insidious for churches to encourage their members to consider voting for Idol contestants who hail from their congregation, their denomination or their faith in general – what is wrong with that? Imagine a member of the West Coast Eagles also happened to be a brilliant singer and at a game an announcer encouraged the crowd to “don’t forget to vote for Ben Cousins in Australian Idol tonight” – would that be considered a form of brainwashing? In the first season there was a performer called Cosima who we were encouraged to vote for just because she was from Western Australia (I believe even the Premier at the time was guilty of this) – is that part of a sinister plot? If someone from our church at Warnbro was on the show I wouldn’t consider it to be at all wrong if our pastor or one of the worship leaders encouraged us to support them? So why is it such a sin for Hillsong to do the same? Apparently they’ve shied away from such public mention of Idol candidates now, but I wouldn’t have a problem with it if they did.

I’m sorry but such illogical, biased and erroneous reporting really gets my goat. I really must make a better effort to avoid these shows from now on.

Warren “Potsie” Weber – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Warren “Potsie” Weber was played by Anson Williams on the sitcom Happy Days. He was a friend of Richie CunninghamRalph Malph, who often spent time at Arnold’s Drive In. He was characterized as not being very bright, somewhat gullible, socially clumsy, and in modern hindsight, very “square”. An enthusiastic singer, he was frequently called a nerd by friends and acquaintances. Potsie’s extremely sour relationship with his dad, (never seen on camera), was a minor running joke on the series, with lines such as “I’m gonna talk to my dad too… it will be the first time in six months!” and

Initially at the start of the series, he appeared with best friend Richie in the plots and appeared to be more savvy than Richie, a character trait that would be dropped by the writers. As the series progressed, and with the breakout character Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli becoming close friends with Richie, Postie was more commonly paired with Ralph in stories, even more so when the pair rented an appartment together upon leaving high-school. [..read more..]

Jerry Seinfeld – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jerome Seinfeld (born April 29, 1954) is a Golden Globe- and Emmy award-winning American comedian, actor, and writer. Seinfeld is often described as an observational comedian. He is best known for playing a semi-fictional version of himself in the long-running sitcom Seinfeld, which he co-created and executive produced.

Seinfeld was born in Brooklyn, New York City to Jewish parents. His father, Kálmán, was of Hungarian Jewish background and his mother, Betty, was of Syrian Jewish background. He grew up in Massapequa, New York and went to Massapequa High School. He then attended the State University of New York at Oswego in upstate New York, but he transferred out after a few semesters. During his time in college, he was an amateur wrestler who called himself “The Jewish Terror.” [..read more..]

John C. McGinley – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Christopher McGinley (born August 3, 1959) is an American actor, producer and screenwriter. He is known for his cynical, wacky, and sometimes sinister, character portrayals.

McGinley, also known as Johnny C. and sometimes credited as John McGinley, has had a prolific career, primarily as a supporting character actor. He came to fame in Oliver Stone’s Platoon in 1986, and went on to work on four other Stone productions. While working as John Turturro’s understudy in John Patrick Shanley’s 1984 production of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea he was noticed by a casting scout, which led to an audition for the role of Sergeant Red O’Neill in the Oscar-winning Platoon, although his first movie role was Alan Alda’s Sweet Liberty (1986). He also was featured in a 1980s Subaru commercial. In 1986, McGinley appeared in a promo video for Megadeth’s Peace Sells.   [..read more.. ]

Doctor Zoidberg – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Doctor John Zoidberg (born August 5), better known as Dr. Zoidberg or simply Zoidberg, is a fictional lobster-like alienDecapod in the television series Futurama. He works as the company doctor for Planet Express, even though he knows very little about the physiology of humans. Zoidberg is voiced by Billy West.

Zoidberg’s age is never revealed in the series, and conflicting views are shown of his childhood. In “A Taste of Freedom“, Zoidberg is seen in child form, but in “Teenage Mutant Leela’s Hurdles“, when the crew reverts to their younger forms, Zoidberg goes through rapid larval stages, including stages where he resembles a slug, trilobite, clam, lamprey, anglerfish, sea urchin, starfish, sea anemone, and sea sponge before growing into his present form. [.. read more.. ]

Paul Kelly: A bizarre blast from the past | The Australian

It’s bound to happen in every TV show and perhaps every political career. And it looks like Kevin Rudd’s dream run has finally come to an end – he’s hopped on his water-skis and jumped that shark. A Labor leader taking his party to the center, standing up to the unions and moving into the 21st century in Blair-like fashion sounded too good to be true … and indeed it was. The commentators are having a field day following the weekend Labor conference, and Paul Kelly’s article above is right on the money…

At this point Labor loses the goodwill of big business, the hope of winning small business and the dream that it stands for entrepreneurship. Rudd’s election strategy is to pitch to working families with the claim that an arrogant Howard has abandoned them.

The stage is set for a bitter election over the industrial model that Australia needs for its open economy, an issue unresolved for a generation that now approaches showdown time.

In his speech, Rudd said Howard had launched “an assault on Australian family life” and that Labor would “restore the balance”.

This is neither a credible nor accurate statement about the totality of Labor’s policy. This policy goes far beyond any family friendly test. It is better described as union friendly. The details and the scale of Labor’s package transcend any effort merely to restore fairness to the workplace.

So the battle lines are drawn – the scene is set for the next election. Either Rudd has shown his true colours or has shown his weakness in this capitulation to the union movement – either way he’s jumped the shark as far as I’m concerned (and to think I was starting to like the guy!) The big question remains though – will the Australian public be fooled by this “family values” line and maintain Rudd’s high ratings, or are Kevin Rudd’s Happy Days drawing to an end? Stay tuned…

Phil Baker has been trying to get his foxtel pay TV disconnected… without much success. Difficult and frustrating for Phil, but it makes for a funny read. The step I empathise with the most was Step 4 where he phoned at 3:35 and was told the desk is only open from 9 to 5 .. eastern time. I have had this kind of thing happen many times and always find it incredibly annoying. For a supposedly national company to not have their phones open during business hours for the whole nation is not good enough.

If nothing else it gives me another excuse to maintain my foxtel – it’s well nigh impossible to disconnect it.

Yesterday was a super hot Tuesday here in Perth with the temperature hitting 42 degress Celsius. Luckily for me I had pre-arranged the day off to get my car serviced and for the Foxtel man to come and so I ended up being home most of the day, of which a lot was spent in the pool. Today is forecast to be just as hot but I haven’t been outside since I got to the surgery this morning so I can’t verify that. Will be jumping straight back in the water when I get home though.

For now, let me give you my weekly round-up of what’s happening in my world…

READING : for some reason I haven’t had much time to read over the last week or so, but the book I’ve started most recently is Jeffrey Sach’s The End of Poverty – this is a book on global poverty and the economic causes and possible solutions. Only read the first couple of chapters so far but it seems really good.

WATCHING : for a couple of years now we’ve had Foxtel, which is a Satellite pay TV system, but haven’t really made good use of it, aside from the kid’s channels. Partly this is due to the fact that when we sit down to watch there often doesn’t seem to be anything appealing on, and if there are good shows they are not on at a suitable time for us. Primarily this is a symptom of the time delay, since Foxtel is based on Eastern Australian time (ie. when their prime time shows are coming on at 8PM, it is still only 6PM here) – well now these problems are solved for us. Yesterday we had our Foxtel unit changed over to the new Foxtel IQ which is a satellite receiver box which contains a hard disk recorder. This means we can now scan the guide for the programs we want to watch and with the press of one button set them to be recorded. You can record two programs at once and even playback a third recording at the same time. It also allows pausing and rewinding of live TV which is handy. This, combined with my use of Windows Media Center for recording free-to-air digital TV, means we now have no excuse for missing anything on TV (aside from the little fact that we have very limited time to watch it…)

WORKING : first day back at work today after 4 days off and it’s been psycho. Funnily enough though virtually all of my consults have been one of three things – pregnancy, babies (most immunisations), and mental health. I got considerably behind this morning, mostly due to the latter, but managed to catch up so I was only 10 minutes behind at lunch time. On the obstetric side of things, after a quiet month in February, things are starting to get busy again. I have a number of inductions booked in over the next week or so, which has been a bit tricky co-ordinating since Jenni is off to Sydney next week. Still it’s all good – helps keeps me busy and helps pay the bills.

Also today I was given a free electronic blood pressure machine, courtesy of the government and a drug company. I vaguely remember filling out a form a couple of months ago for it, and it was delivered today. Very nice $1500 machine – I normally prefer to check BPs the old fashioned way but this machine is the best I’ve seen. Nothing like another gadget to keep me happy. Might be the last for a while though, unless more freebies come along – I’m now on a serious financial-restraint effort. We’ll see how it goes.

Anyway that’s enough, I’m getting a bit behind again. I would mention what I’m eating today but there was no drug lunch so my stomach is empty! Oh well, time to keep plowing along.

Work has been fairly quiet today, which is a good thing because I’ve had a number of different distractions…

Here’s one of them – a funny clip I discovered on YouTube. If you like the TV show Heroes you might appreciate this.

Another busy weekend spent doing all sorts of things, but in amongst it all I managed to install Windows Vista on my PC. And I must say, thus far I like it a lot. The install process was painless, the user interface is nice, and the whole system is running faster and smoother than it has in a long time. I particularly like the Windows Media Center component which among other things allows me to tune into and record digital TV including high definition, and also connects to my X-Box 360 to allow me to access this in my home theatre room. So in effect it’s turned my Xbox into a DVR or TiVo type machine, with the added benefit of being able to record HD content, pause and rewind live TV etc. To buy a standalone box that does that would cost me over $1000 so for that alone Vista has been a worthwhile investment (I got an OEM version super cheap). The only limitation is that HD content doesn’t stream smoothly using a wireless connection to my Xbox. It did however, work perfectly when I ran a long ethernet cable through the house, so later this week I’ll be working with my brother to install a permanent ethernet connection from the computer room to the theatre room. After that I’ll be able to ditch my digital set-top-box (or at least move it to the living room TV which is currently only running SD TV).

Almost all the software I have tried works fine on Vista, with only 2 exceptions that I can think of. One is that I was unable to get Trackmania running (a car racing game that the kids like) and the other is that despite Microsoft saying it should work, I kept getting errors when I tried to apply the WA daylight savings patch. Need to try and fine another way around that bug since the TiVo functionality needs accurate time to programme recordings.

But overall, Vista seems great so far!

‘Veggie Tales’ loses faith
One of the shows my kids enjoy watching on DVD is Veggie Tales, a sometimes cringeworthy but usually funny Christian children’s show in which a cast of animated vegetables act out stories from the bible or other religious lessons. I disliked the show at first, but it is growing on me after being exposed to hours of the DVDs.

Anyway it seems that a storm is growing in the US over the show. Recently they signed a deal with TV network NBC to show the show in it’s Saturday morning lineup. Unfortunately, the network then proceeded to force them to excise any references to God or the Bible from the show, which kinda defeats the purpose of it in the first place. Creator Phil Vischer and his comrades were kept in the dark about this and felt betrayed. You can read some of Phil’s side of the story on his blog.

What strikes me about this is what it says about the schizoid nature of American society. We so commonly hear about how the religious right is gaining more and more influence, and how the US is one of the most religious nations on Earth. Yet at the same time we see this sort of extreme political correctness where you can’t mention God in a kid’s TV show. I’m not saying that this is not true of Australia also, you just see it so much more vividly there. Very bizarre story.

One of the highpoints of the World Cup football coverage so far has been the discovery of this great little SBS program they show at 8pm (Perth time) before the main game – Nerds FC.

In this reality show they have taken a bunch of bona fide Nerds, all around university student age, and started training them to form a soccer team, with the ultimate challenge of playing a match against a professional team in a 20,000 seat stadium. Along the way they face various challenges designed to build their confidence, teamwork, and physical fitness. In last night’s episode they went and played a game against the inmates in a high security prison, including a number who were in for murder. The previous night saw them recording the team theme song, which despite some of their execrable voices, still proved to be so annoyingly catchy I’ve been unable to get it out of my head since. The show also features brief bios of each of the guys, where they demonstrate just how nerdy they really are.

It may not be everyone’s cup of tea but I found this show hilarious – check it out! Nerds that they are, the website also features a video podcast so you can subscribe for highlights of previous episodes.

Well I’m sad to say that the finest television show in recent history (if not all time), The West Wing, has reached the end of it’s seven year run in the US. Of course Australian fans will have to wait at least year or two before the finale gets televised here. Of course you can always get hold of the DVDs when they come out – Amazon UK is releasing the Season 7 box set on September 11 this year – my pre-order is already in. But if you can’t wait that long there are other ways of getting the recent episodes to watch, if you know how and where to look…

I don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t seen it, and who probably haven’t seen any of season 7 or even season 6, but I’ll just give a few general comments on the finale. The show bows out in a very graceful, almost subdued fashion, free from much of the hectic, frenetic pace and non-stop drama that has characterised the show. It was a nice end, but felt almost anti-climactic. Now I agree that the end of Bartlet’s Presidency makes a sensible place to finish the show, but they could easily have gone on with it had they wanted to. The recent election campaign has more than adequately built up a range of new and sympathetic characters to staff a new West Wing to make up for those that would be leaving. After a disappointing season 5, the last two seasons have been a welcome return to form for the show. Following the plight of the new President’s administration (I won’t say who won for those Aussie fans who don’t want to know) would have been very interesting to watch. But I guess we’ll just have to leave that to our collective imagination, unless the producers/network have an unlikely change of heart.

TV just won’t be the same without The West Wing. I started watching the new show “Commander in Chief” with Geena Davis earlier this year but gave up on it after a few episodes. It just wasn’t in the same league as The West Wing – more like the White House meets 7th Heaven. All that remains for me on telly at the moment is the Amazing Race – which was in my home town of Perth last week – kinda cool seeing places I know really well featured on a major US TV show! Only one thing for me to do I think, dust off my West Wing Season 1 DVDs and start all over again from the beginning. It’s been a couple of years now since I’ve watched those old episodes so hopefully it will seem fresh again.

Every year I scan the TV guide to see what the networks are offering at Easter. I remember as a kid coming home from church on Friday and Sunday at noon and having our choice of at least two religious epics on different channels, often followed by another one, and then more religious movies in prime time. Unfortunately, to look at today’s television, you’d hardly know it was Easter. Channel 7 does best – they at least are showing The Passion of the Christ tonight (and commercial free too, which I applaud. It just wouldn’t seem right to interrupt that movie with adverts), followed by A Story of David at 11:55pm, and they have an “Easter Celebration” on in the morning, but unfortunately their midday movie is just A Passage to India. Anyway at least they get part-marks (7/10). Channel 9 do poorly – a half hour religious show called Easter Glory at 10:30am and then nothing all day. Instead of a midday movie they have Dr Phil and Days of our Lives, and for the evening it’s the Super Nanny USA and the movie The Out-Of-Towners (2/10) The ABC have their normal children’s TV all day, no Easter content whatsoever. They do at least have a religious documentary at 7:30 about a “maverick priest” in Redfern but that’s a pretty poor effort since it’s not specifically Easter-related (0.5/10). The other two stations, Channel Ten and SBS, are similarly poor. Ten has a show called “Celebrate Easter” at 6am but for most people who wouldn’t get up that early on a public holiday there’s diddly squat – their evening movie is EdTV (0.5/10). SBS has something called “A quest for the true cross” at 2pm for which I’ll give them half a mark also although I have no idea what it is – for all I know it may be a ‘Jesus seminar’ style program (0.5/10). Overall a very poor effort indeed. Let’s hope they all do better on Sunday.

As for me, I have my Easter viewing already selected. I’ve had waiting on my shelf for a few months a DVD copy of Barabbas, the 1962 movie starring Anthony Quinn, Jack Palance, Ernest Borgnine and others, which would have to be one of my favourite religious epics. It’s an excellent, powerful film and I’d encourage you to watch it if you get the chance (if they ever show it on TV again). I’ve also got a copy of the Nobel prize winning novel on which the movie was based, which I’ll be starting in the next few days.

EDIT : Well Channel 9 loses marks. I got home from church and switched on their only offering Easter Glory which I was disappointed to discover was a series of antiquated hymns from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They only put one Easter show on and it’s not even Christian! (0.5/10 for them)

Below is an image I found quite humorous, but it’s the sort of think you’d probably get only if you are familiar with both author Brian McLaren and the Veggie Tales TV show. If so, then click the link below, if not then please ignore this post…
Read the rest of this entry »

Just a quick book recommendation. Earlier today I finished The Jesus Creed, by Scot McKnight. This is a great book which among other things, emphasises that there is more to Jesus than just his death and resurrection. The story of Jesus’ life, the way he lived and the things he did, are all filled with significance and conform to a singular emphasis of love for God and others – the ‘Jesus Creed.’ I especially valued the final section of the book, where McKnight discusses how various events in Jesus’ life, such as his baptism, temptation, and transfiguration, still have ongoing significance for us today. It’s a very powerful, interesting, and easy to read book and I would heartily recommend it.

The next book I’m tackling is ‘Orthodoxy‘ by G K Chesterton (Gilbert Keith Chesterton) – I wonder if anyone else has spotted the fact that the effeminate restaurant critic on Frasier (one of my favourite shows) has the same name as this classic turn of the century Christian author – Gil Chesterton. I certainly can’t find any link between the two with a quick google.

Anyway the first chapter has already proven to be a unique mix of profound thought with a healthy dose of wit, kind of reminiscent of C.S. Lewis, which I guess is not surprising given that Lewis regarded Chesterton as one of his greatest influences. Here’s a couple of examples :

It is always perilous to the mind to reckon up the mind. A flippant person has asked why we say, “As mad as a hatter.” A more flippany person might answer that a hatter is mad because he has to measure the human head.

For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed forever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms forever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox at its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travelers.

I’m not a big fan of reality TV, but I’ll freely admit I have really enjoyed getting into The Amazing Race this year. It’s great seeing all the interesting place the teams visit and the challenges they are faced with and the way their personalities are revealed through it. If I lived in America and had no kids I’d go on this show in an instant. In last night’s final episode I was pleased to see that one of my favourite teams, Uchenna and Joyce, won the million dollars. This was doubly satisfying because they beat the sneaky survivors Rob and Amber, who i was afraid would win. The good thing about Uchenna & Joyce is that they had a strong relationship with each other throughout, and never played dirty. In fact even at the very end Uchenna was risking winning because he was determined to make sure his taxi driver got paid. Great to see some nice guys come out on top. They were probably my favourite team but other ones I liked and would have been fairly happy to see win would have been the old couple, the two gay guys, and the two brothers – once again all these teams were pretty nice people who looked after each other, unlike some of their competition. Can’t wait til the next season comes along. I just wish I had’ve started watching this show in previous years.

This is a quote from the TV show ‘House’ that I’ve been watching lately. Actually that’s a reasonably profound quote from what is otherwise a fairly funny show – it’s the best medical humour on TV since ‘Scrubs’ The reason I mention that quote today is that it was quoted to me this morning by a patient who felt that it really spoke to her situation. Amazing how God can speak to people even through TV shows.

Anyway check out House if you get a chance. It really is a one man show, held up by the brilliantly conceived character of Dr House, played by Hugh Laurie, although he has a reasonably good supporting character. His character is one of the best I’ve seen in a long time – scarred and flawed, full of sarcasm and cynicism, but with glimpses of a deeper heart at times and covering it all with an incisive wit. Actually if it wasn’t for the character, and the way Hugh Laurie plays him, the show probably wouldn’t be worth watching, but I’ll watch it for that alone. Medically speaking, the show is incredibly inaccurate and unrealistic. The hospital seems to only have a small band of doctors, who end up doing virtually everything from running their own lab tests to radiology. The diagnoses are always rare and far fetched, and the diagnostic process of House and his team is very haphazard. This is not to mention House’s ethics, which appear to come from way out of right field (although that’s part of his charm too). Most ludicrous example I can remember thus far is the pregnant woman who is concerned that her husband may not be the father. Somehow House manages to order a paternity test of the unborn child just by checking the parents blood (which is not even remotely possible at present) and in the process lies to the father and tells him it’s a blood test for glandular fever. So not only medically impossible but also completely unethical also. But as I said, all these things aside it’s worth checking out just to enjoy the character.

Everyone’s been talking about this show (eg ob1 and bruce) so we finally got around to watching it last night. And I must say, for a reality TV show it was actually pretty good and positive. The Supernanny actually gave some really useful practical and sensible advice that matches well with a lot of parenting material that we’ve seen. Jenni made the great observation that if this show becomes popular, and a lot of parents watch it each week, some of this stuff can’t help but rub off and have a positive impact on families. So it’s a good thing. Bruce makes another good point on his blog that maybe this show is tapping into a real need in our society that we in the church can do more to cater to – something to think about.

The other reality show I’ve started watching lately is the Amazing Race. I’ve heard about this before from a few people but never got around to watching it. It’s an entertaining show with the added benefit that it is not completely contrived, like other shows like ‘Survivor’ – these are real people competing in mostly real world environments, like having to navigate their way through a strange city where they don’t speak the language. I could see this being another show I could get hooked on, especially as it explores so many different countries and cultures as well. Anyway I think I have patients waiting so enough TV talk for now.

Only 10 days to go until Star Wars Episode III comes out, and fromt he sound of things, it’s gonna be a corker. Now that’ll be the end of the movie hexology (is that a word?) but not the end of the Star Wars franchise – This report [Star Wars in Oz ] details a spin off TV show that George Lucas is looking at making here in Australia. Also there will be a continuation of the excellent Clone Wars animated series that I’ve been watching recently with Owen (first on Cartoon Network, now on DVD from Amazon) – so there’ll be plenty to keep fans of the Force happy for a long time to come.

Stealing the show – TV & Radio – www.smh.com.au – interesting article about how the next phase in the war of P2P media downloading is television shows. It started with music files with napster in the late 90’s, then it was movies, and now TV shows are the next big thing.

Although I was a relatively early adopter with napster, seeing it begin small (and good) and through it’s heyday and decline, I’ve never really seriously jumped on the bandwagon of any P2P software since. To date TV has been the same for me, with a couple of exceptions. But the moral argument against downloading TV shows seems to be to have a bit less force than with music and movies, since it’s something you don’t pay for anyway. And especially in cases where the TV network treats it’s viewers with such disrespect like Channel 9 did with The West Wing (and several other shows), you can almost claim it’s justifiable. Plus now I have a new DVD player that will play downloaded DivX files, there’s fewer technical and convenience factors involved. I’m holding out again as it’s less than a month now til I can get the latest DVD set, but the temptation is strong.

I like the Star Wars analogy :

“If you strike me down,” Obi-Wan Kenobi warned Darth Vader in 1977’s Star Wars (a popular movie download, incidentally), “I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” The lawyers have become Darth Vader and his stormtroopers, leaving the geeks who create the file-sharing software comfortable in the belief they are Jedi Knights, self-styled freedom fighters in the copyright war. And consumers, tired of huge media company profits, albums packed with dud songs, long waits for their favourite TV shows and $6.50 tubs of popcorn at their local movieplex, have become indifferent to the legal niceties.

Digital daze – TV & Radio – www.theage.com.au – this is a good article on the current state of play regarding digital TV in Australia, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. And for those who don’t know much about it, there’s a good FAQ at the bottom.

Just watching the new series of Battlestar Galactica which I taped tonight. I only have vague memories of the original show, which was on when I was about 5 – the main things being their cool spaceships, helemts and motorbikes when they came to Earth. So I can’t make much comparison with the new series, but so far it seems pretty good. Especially now I no longer have The West Wing to watch each weekm it’s good to have a bit a harmless sci-fi to help fill my viewing week.

Still having Starbuck as a girl just doesn’t seem quite right though.

Here’s another reason to get digital TV – a new ABC channel starting in early March. The station will be available on digital set-top boxes and Foxtel and will feature a range of programs, including a lot of extra stuff for kids. Always good to have more and more choice.

I’ve now given up hope of channel 9 returning the West Wing to our screens any time soon. In a knee-jerk reaction to the success of Seven’s (non-crime related) hit shows Desperate Housewives and Lost Nine have continued to change their programming around every week and have now decided to fill Tuesday nights with guess what? More crime. And what’s worse, it’s not just any generic crime show – it’s another CSI clone. So the West Wing is gone from Australian TV for the forseeable future. As an aside I must say the station that most impresses me at the moment is Ten – they seem to know their demographic and their format and they stick to it, not constantly changing around and trying to please everyone. They play to their stregths.

Anyway back to the West Wing I’m happy to be able to say there is some light at the end of the tunnel, thanks to Tim, whose sentiments about channel 9 I heartily concur with. Season 5 is being released on DVD in the UK in April, available at Amazon so that’s the longest we will have to wait. And then we’ll be able to watch it with high quality picture and sound, free from crappy channel 9 promos featuring Eddie McGuire and his comrades. It might be time then to re-program my TV, skipping the station between 7 and 10, at least until next summer when the cricket comes back on.

UPDATE : now at least the media have picked up the story of the West Wing, and the betrayal implicit in Nine’s handling of it. Here’s a good commentary from The Age, which I found on Phil Baker’s Blog (another angry Wing-nut).

Just checked the TV guide for this week and there is no sign of the West Wing as we feared. Fortunately in it’s place on Tuesday night, channel nine have wisely replaced it with a series called “Real crime” because there’s such a shortage of crime shows on TV nowadays – nice to have something different.

According to the discussion over at Phil Baker’s blog though, West Wing will be back on shortly, so we’ll give them another week to get their act together and put it back on before we start getting up in arms about it.

UPDATE : Just did a search of the ninemsn TV guide and according to it, West Wing is on at 11pm February 8 (checked both Sydney and Perth) – so which one do we believe?

UPDATE 2 : further exploration of the ninemsn site led me to this discussion board, which seems to agree that West Wing is back on. So I feel better now, but will need to remain vigilant

Very bad news on Phil’s Blog this morning. It seems that after having made us wait for months and months, Channel Nine may have cancelled the best show on Television, The West Wing. Phil quotes from a column in today’s Australian :

Nine’s White House goes west

AND vale The West Wing. Nine pulled the show last night, despite being half-way through the fifth season. It not surprisingly did not rate well at 10.30pm – although 420,000 were still staying up for it. In the US it is similarly down a bit in viewing numbers, but as The New York Times pointed out last month, its 11.9 million viewers “remain among the most affluent watching television” and valuable viewers as far as advertisers are concerned. It’s a good guess the Australian audience falls into the same category. Something for Nine’s programmers to consider.

I don’t know if this means the show was actually on last night or not, or if it’s cancelled as of next week, since I put a tape on and was planning to watch it tonight. If indeed the show is cancelled (which I find it difficult to believe, or is that just denial?) then it’s a sad day. Lowbrow reality series and generic crime dramas seem to have triumphed over intelligent, quality drama.

I shall be scanning next week’s TV guide intently, and if indeed the West Wing does disappear I don’t intend to take this lying down. There are at least 420,000 Australians who will be saddened by this, and many of these Wingnuts are bloggers (eg Phil, ob1, Tim, and others) A Churchillian fight may be required, but perhaps we can get Nine to change it’s mind, and at the very least put it on at 3am so we can tape it. Failing that, I shall have to place my hope on Foxtel finally becoming worth the amount I pay for it.

It’s funny how at times reality surpasses fantasy.
I was just watching a movie with Owen on the Disney Channel – “Honey I Blew Up The Kid”. This was a fairly harmless, mildly entertaining B-grade kids movie from 1992 starring Rick Moranis as a bumbling inventor. One of his inventions was a special helmet which had a phone built in so he could talk and still have both his hands free! Take a look at this picture of his wonderful invention from 1992 and then compare it to today’s little Bluetooth hands-free headsets and you’ll see what I mean about reality eclipsing fantasy. How many things do we take for granted now that we couldn’t have imagined in 1992? The pace of change in our world is amazing.
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Well the West Wing finally returned last night, yet I recorded it rather than watch it, as Jenni and myself were feeling very tired after several sleepless nights with the boys and needed an early night. (so please don’t tell me what happened until I’ve watched it!)

In the end I didn’t get my early night after all. Just before I was going to head to bed I happened to flick past the History Channel and discovered a very interesting doco on life in the British Navy in the time of Lord Nelson. Since this is a subject in which I have a keen interest (thanks to Patrick O’Brian) I ended up sitting and watching the whole thing. Aside from being a fascinating documentary in itself, featuring the HMS Victory and contrasting life on board with a modern English warship, it had the additional interest of being presented and produced by Prince Edward. He was actually a really good presenter and did a great job. I found it interesting that he went simply by the name ‘Edward Windsor’ and there was no mention at all of him being royalty. I wonder how often royals simply use their common name like that without their titles? I can’t imagine Prince Charles doing the same thing for some reason.

And after all that we ended up getting a good night’s sleep for a change. Luke slept the whole night through (10:30pm – 6am) for once.
Anyway I’d better get back to work – patients to see. It’s nice to have net access at work again. It’s been a bit hit and miss here over the last couple of months.

Just watching the Australian Idol finale, which is all a bit of a let down after last year. I can’t say I particularly like either one of the finalists. Anthony is certainly the favourite and is the more polished performer but he’s a bit too cliched and ‘plastic’ for me. And Casey is still the same sullen grungy teenage girl, no matter how much they doll her up. I have a sneaking feeling she might come out on top for some reason (and in a weekend where Glen McGrath got a test 50 then I suppose anything is possible!). Either way I can’t see either of them having a very prolonged career – perhaps if Casey won she might last longer than Anthony, if she gets a good band around her. Anthony is just far too generic to have much longevity. The debut single they’ve picked is a shocker as well – feels like it was produced by a computer program on demand.

I think the idol format peaked a year ago, and on that topic there’s an interesting looking doco on ABC tonight about Guy Sebastian and his church, which should be worth watching. A few weeks back I got the Paradise Live album from the Paradise Church, featuring Guy as worship leader, which is really good. Another great worship album I just got a couple of days ago is a new collaboration from Hillsong + Delerious? which is really worth a listen. I like some of the Delerious? songs – in places they sound a bit like U2, makes me wish I could nail that sound of The Edge on guitar. There’s nothing like that 80s U2 stuff.

Anyway that’s a bit of a scattered entry but that’s what you get when I’m watching TV at the same time. Now to see who wins…

Ok, just let me state that I am officially over the whole Australian Idol thing now. After being cheesed off the whole series by quality singers like Rikki-Lee and Chanel being voted out prematurely, I was fairly confident that at least the final would be between two of the more talented singers in the field, Anthony (who I predicted will win) and Courtney (who I liked more) – but yet again the Australian public have incomprehensibly voted through the surly teenager Casey, who should have been voted out weeks ago. I just can’t imagine who is voting for this girl – although I guess it’s the surly teenage girls who are the nation’s number 1 SMS users so I shouldn’t be too suprised. So all appeal has gone out of the final for me – I hope Anthony wins just to restore some of the show’s lost credibility – even though I don’t like him all that much, he is a greatly superior singer and performer.

Also the judges have been getting more and more partisan with their comments, especially Marcia. I don’t think she has had a single constructive thing to say the whole series and the way she gushed over Casey tonight was nauseating.

Anyway I just had to get that out of my system *takes a deep breath*
Now if only I could find something better to watch on TV… five channels is just not enough….

Finally got our copy of The West Wing Season 4 from Amazon UK yesterday, which was pretty impressive considering the release date was only the 27th of September. I pre-ordered it a month or two ago.

Coincidentally I got a comment from Tim yesterday on the same issue. No news yet on when season 5 is going to be screened but at least the delay means we’ll have season 4 finished by the time season 5 starts here, sometime in the summer.

Here’s a great story from news.com.au – Oprah gives entire audience cars. She gave everyone in the audience a free car valued at US$28,000 each. Don’t you wish you could be in the audience for something like that. The closest I ever came was when we visited Hillsong Church in 1999 they gave washing machines to a bunch of needy people in the audience on the spur of the moment – sadly for us we’d just bought a new washing machine, and I doubt they would have shipped it back to Perth for us anyway. Still it was nice to see them helping people in need.

Last week I posted an atricle from the New York Times about the possible decline of The West Wing. Just discovered a great article from Slate News [via Phil's Blog] which details how series creator Aaron Sorkin has responded to negative allegations about himself by the same NYT author Bernard Weinraub by posting messages in an internet bulletin board forum (under the alias of ‘Benjamin’.) Looks to me like Sorkin has himself developed a case of Lemon-Lyman Syndrome, which you will remember from the episode where Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman goes temporarily insane arguing with the pundits of a fan site devoted to him, lemon-lyman.com. [see Season 3 - 'The US Poet Laureate']
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Continuing my regular watch on all things ‘West Wing’ related here is a link from the New York Times that ob1 sent me last night, which laments the show’s decline since the departure of Aaron Sorkin and mentions a possibility of cancellation next year, which would be a huge tragedy. Now I’m thoroughly depressed…

In other shark jumping news, I’m currently looking around the net to see if I can find a download of the Happy Days episode where the now legendary shark jump takes place. I don’t remember actually ever seeing that episode so it would be interesting to get a hold of it. If anyone knows where to find it please let me know.