Category: review

Star Trek Discovery – First Season Thoughts

Star Trek has been my go to science fiction for a long time. Well at least until I discovered Stargate SG1 and Atlantis. Neither SG1 or Atlantis have the staying power of Star Trek.

This year we were given a new high-production mini-series to watch, Star Trek Discovery. Star Trek is near and dear to many a nerds heart and many poo-pooed the idea as soon as it was announced. Even I was not very excited.

But then I watched the show.

And it didn’t suck.

I did a “first impressions” post on this show when it launched and I was pretty happy with it then. Among a few choices I would have chosen to leave out. The constant talking in Klingon being one of them. While I appreciate the absolute nerdiness of that I don’t enjoy listening to that language.

Was there anything else I would have changed? Yep. Star Trek doesn’t need love scenes. Don’t care who you are you don’t need it. If you do you shouldn’t be watching Star Trek. This was annoying infatuation throughout the entire run of the series. Why does every female lead need to have a boyfriend? Seriously, this happens in way too many things.

Other than that, the special effects were incredible. The props were incredibly detailed. It was all very well executed.

Anyways, the second half of the season proved to be the reason to watch the show. The first half while interesting was a bit of a mess. The past of Captain Lorca catches up to everyone and we see some familiar faces.

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I gotta say the final touch for me was seeing the Enterprise hail the Discovery. Man they did a great job bring the constitution class from the Original Series in to this era.

My only regret is that these mini-series seasons are only supposed to focus on one era every season. It turns out I really want to see more from the crew of Discovery.

Star Trek Discovery is totally recommended.

It Turns Out the Nintendo Switch Doesn’t Suck…

Like may of us, I made a lot of purchases on Black Friday and my one and only big ticket item was a Nintendo Switch. And yes, I picked up the one with the neon blue and red joycons cuz FUN!

Since the terrible handling of the NES Classic edition and the current mishandling of the SNES Classic edition I had written Nintendo off. No, not in that I believed they would die because of this as I am well aware they are making a killing with the Switch. No I just was unhappy about their blatant approval of price scalpers on their NES and SNES Classic. I had decided I would not buy another Nintendo product.

Well I caved on Black Friday. There was a $60 off promo on Ebay for new Switches so I picked one up. It arrived while I was on the road but I when I got home I quickly opened it up and began exploring the console. Continue reading “It Turns Out the Nintendo Switch Doesn’t Suck…”

I Built a Home Theatre! Part 2 – Choosing Speakers

Last time we were gathered here together, class, we took a look at the process of picking up the heart of any home theatre system – the receiver. The receiver is so important because that’s where all your inputs go into and where those inputs get turned in to audio and video for our consumption. The audio and video produced can only ever be as good as what the receiver can handle so picking the right receiver is critical. I picked up a refurbished Sony STR-DH550 receiver that has been praised for it’s great audio reproduction and looked down upon for it’s ancient menu interface.

Today we look at how we get the audio out of our Sony STR-DH550 receiver from our inputs. So there are a few things to consider when you look at a speaker setup for your home theatre system. Continue reading “I Built a Home Theatre! Part 2 – Choosing Speakers”

I Built a Home Theatre! Part 1– Choosing a Receiver

For quite some time I have been toying around with the idea of building a home theatre or even just a Hi-Fi that I could connect to my entertainment devices to get some real decent sound. What ultimately spurred me to go ahead with this was my love for Blurays. Continue reading “I Built a Home Theatre! Part 1– Choosing a Receiver”

Nespresso Inissia

So I am far from new to the single-serve instant brewer systems out there. I started with the Keurig (before the 2.0 DRM stupidity) and use it occasionally for brewing large cups of coffee when entertaining guests. I then supplemented my Keurig K65 with a Tassimo T65 to make quick and easy lattes and cappuccinos with the supplied real milk tdsics. Real milk was the thing there.

Recently Tassimo moved to a new way of making cappuccinos and lattes. They are using condensed milk and powered milk in almost every case now and the beverage quality has suffered a lot. This led me looking to alternatives. The next big brand of singe-serve brewers is the Nespresso line. Continue reading “Nespresso Inissia”