Blogs vs. Web Pages

One of the advantages to a blog over a "regular" web page is the lack of format. Most web sites have a theme that holds them together; while a lot of blogs also tend to follow a central theme, there’s nothing that says they have to. Besides, blogs are so much easier to create and maintain.

Take, for example, this post. I’m using it to complain about the completely fruitless time I spent yesterday afternoon, last evening, and this morning trying to watch a movie on DVD. Were I to chronicle my adventures (or rather, misadventures) on a web page, I’d have to fire up my HTML editor, writer the article ad then add the HTML. But with my blog entry, I just launch Qumana, write what I want, and then post it. Simple. Done.

Would that watching a movie were so simple! I have a small television and combination DVD/VHS player in my bedroom, neither of which I’ve used in about 3 years. In the first place, I don’t have cable or satellite. In the second place, I don’t watch that many movies. And in the third place, on those rare occasions that I do watch a movie, I usually watch it on one of my laptops. And therein lies the problem.

One of my laptops runs Linux, and one runs Windows XP. At one time, the Linux distribution was Ubuntu. But I replaced it a couple of months ago with PCLinuxOS (PCLOS). I haven’t had occasion since then to watch a movie on that system. With Ubuntu, everything worked fine. But I bought a new DVD the other day, and decided to watch it this weekend. When I fired up my Linux system and loaded the DVD, it played the FBI warning screen, the Interpol warning screen, and then the MPAA rating screen. That’s as far as it got.

Okay, I had recently upgraded PCLOS to a beta version, so maybe that was the problem. So I reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled the previous version. No go. Same problem. Well, I knew that Ubuntu worked, so I reinstalled it and started to watch the movie. No problem!

Until it got past the intro and into the movie itself, at which point the bottom 1/8th of the screen was jumpy. So I gave up on watching the movie under Linux and switched to my Windows box.

Nero Showtime works well on my system, except that for some reason, whenever the movie gets to a point where the sound track is really loud, the sound skips and drops out momentarily. Thinking it was a Nero issue, I downloaded and reinstalled the original DVD movie player that came with the computer. When I loaded the movie, the player told me I needed to change my screen resolution, something I had never had to do before. At that point, I called it a day and went to bed.

This morning, I’ve been working since 9:30 reloading PCLOS in an unsuccessful attempt to watch my movie. I also re-downloaded and reinstalled the Intervideo DVD player software, again without success. It is now 1:30 in the afternoon. I have a batch of orange-cranberry muffins in the toaster oven. They have another 5 minutes or so to bake, at which point I will take them out of the oven and let them cool.

While they are cooling, I shall brew a fresh pot of tea and then, having drowned my sorrows in tea and a muffin, I shall retire to my boudoir to watch my movie on the television with my DVD player.

Assuming, of course, I can find the remote, which I haven’t seen for several months.

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