Mark Mischke's Weblog

Old sci-fi TV shows on DVD

I recently bought season one of Wild Wild West and seasons one and two of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea on DVD. These series ran during the mid-1960s and I remember watching them as recent reruns on our black-and-white TV.

I'm a huge fan of the Wild Wild West movie (Will Smith). Everyone involved did a great job of modernizing the original without disrespecting it. As I watched a few original episodes from the DVD it became apparent just how faithfully they adhered to the details. Kudos!

Voyage has been a lot of fun to revisit, too. I must have built the Flying Sub model kit half a dozen times when I was a kid. Nowadays, those old Aurora model kits sell for several hundred dollars on eBay - when you can find them. The DVD brought back a lot of memories. While the Seaview (the submarine which was the focus of the show) was really cool, I always liked the Flying Sub best. It was a 2 - 4-person mini-sub that could fly (as the name suggests).

Now I've gotta see if Land of the Giants is available yet. :-)

Updated Feb. 04, 2007: GOOD GOD, MAN! What have I done?!!? As the self-anointed worldwide protector of correct apostrophe usage, I have myself committed the very sin I so loathe. I've dutifully removed the offending symbol which, until now, followed the word series in the first paragraph. I humbly thank my lovely wife for pointing out this most unforgivable act of punctuary oversight. And no. 'Punctuary' probably isn't a word, but I'm sure you know what I mean. :-)

Vegetarian for a month

Just after Thanksgiving I decided to go vegetarian for the rest of 2006. I fell off the wagon on Christmas Eve. My motivation was simple. I wanted to see how easy it would be to do, how I'd feel and how much energy I'd have. I was pretty sure that I wouldn't go hungry. I eat a lot of veggie-compatible foods to begin with, and I generally like 'meatless meat' soy products. Being married to a vegetarian ensures that I get to try many of them.

I didn't really miss meat all that much and I didn't feel any different than usual. I stacked the deck in my favor by keeping the 'fridge full of fake meat products.

I fell off the wagon because I let myself get overly hungry. I'd had too much coffee and not enough breakfast. I'd gone out to do a few errands and was trapped by the gravitational pull of McDonald's as I drove by, stomach rumbling. One McChicken sandwich opened the floodgates and I began craving meat. I overdid it for a few days, but that's what the holidays are for, right? Now I'm finding some balance. I'm eating more soy and less red meat than before. When I do eat meat, it's frequently of the lean variety.

I accept that I'm omniverous by nature. I wish I didn't like meat so much, since it's less environmentally friendly than soy products. I can't say that I condone the factory farming techniques which produce much of our meat. I may eliminate non-kosher meats from my diet, since kosher meats must comply with strict humane-treatment standards. I'm not Jewish, so I may not have all my facts straight. My wife is Jewish, but she's a veggie, so she probably can't help me out much here, either. Either way, my goal is to eat better for me and better for the environment.

OS X vs. Logitech Webcams

My Mac mini has become my everyday machine. I use it for everything except for my work (I'm a .Net developer). Even then, I run Windows on my Mac via Parallels virtualization.

Until the other day I'd never had problems getting peripherals to work. My printer (HP PhotoSmart 7760) was automagically detected and configured by OS X and I found OS X drivers for my scanner (Canon LiDE 30) on Canon's site. I have a Logitech Elite keyboard (w/Win & Mac keys) and trackball, both of which have excellent Mac driver support for their non-standard features.

Then I tried to get a Webcam going. I have a Logitech QuickCam Pro 5000 and QuickCam Pro for Notebooks. Both are modern devices. The 5000 is only a few months old. Both cameras work great with Windows, but lack OS X drivers. The QuickCam Pro for Notebooks does have a downloadable OS X driver, but it's circa 2003 and PPC-only.

iOXperts has been providing Webcam drivers for OS X for several years now, but they're all PPC-based and their site doesn't show any evidence of ongoing development. The macam project (freeware) looked promising, but they have the same PPC-only issue. In either case, the 5000 isn't supported and QCP for Notebooks support is questionable.

Needless to say, I'm pretty disappointed with Logitech. They've always seemed like a Mac-friendly vendor and I'm surprised that they haven't hired a person or two to write some OS X drivers for their Webcams. I respect that they're under no obligation to do so, as the cams in question have never claimed to feature Mac support, but c'mon. A year ago, my scanner didn't have a Mac driver and the good folks at Canon managed to create one. The Mac is a reality in the computing world, especially in the home. Customers will increasingly expect hardware to support it.

I'm sure that I can find a high-quality cross-platform Webcam out there somewhere, but there's no way that I can rationalize buying a THIRD unit. Parallels is promising virtualized Webcam support in its next release, so I'll just be patient. I don't expect 30 fps @ 640x480 performance under virtualization, but I'll take what I can get.