Recently in TV Category
WABC had a fire in the studio tonight, one serious enough to take them off the air:
Everyone's complaining about the low resolution of the videos you can download from iTunes Music Store, but I just downloaded a show, and it looks good enough for casual viewing. I watched it in full screen mode on my iBook, and it's fine. Sure HD would be great, but considering I downloaded a 43-minute show (209MB) in fewer than 10 minutes through my standard cable connection, I can't really complain.
Here's a full-size screen grab. It's from the pilot for Lost. Note that you can see the little hairs around the guy's eye, and that the banding you see seems to be an artifact of the screen grabber, and is not visible in the original video source. Not too bad.
Update: For comparison's sake, here's a screenshot taken from the DVD, taken from the same scene.
Tonight was round 1 of the Jeopardy College Tournament. One of the contestants, Kermin, a comp-sci/engineering student from Carnegie Mellon University, had a commanding lead (well over $10K) going into Final Jeopardy.
His final wager had Alex Trebek scratching his head, but Kermin was clearly sending a message to fellow computer nerds. His wager:
$1337
In leetspeak, 1337 translates to "leet" or "elite."
Due to his correct response in Final Jeopardy, Kermin ended up with $31,542, which makes it likely he'll wind up in the final rounds of the tournament. It was a clever gesture, perhaps one that only could have been outdone if he had wagered $1132, which would have left him a final score of $31,337.
Somewhat relatedly, "Video Games" was a category earlier in the game, (Everquest, Grand Theft Auto, and Unreal Tournament were all correct responses) and "Blogs" was a category a few weeks ago.
Thanks to my friend Chenzie for getting me the screenshot.
Update (11/19/04): According to a comment below, Kermin won the game tonight by wagering $1041. 1041, when converted from decimal to hexadecimal equals "411." 411 is a synonym for "information." Thanks for catching it, Max. I believe this pushes him into next week's finals.
Update (11/22/04): In tonight's game, Round 1 of the Finals, Kermin explained his 1337 wager to Alex and the rest of the audience. He went on to win the game, putting him in a great spot for Round 2 of the Finals on Tuesday. I think he has to lose by $10,000 in order to lose the championship.
Update (11/23/04): Kermin won the finals, by a lot.
Friday night was the final round of Jeopardy's Tournament of Champions. I was surprised to see that one of the categories for Double Jeopardy was "Blogs." Here are screen caps of each of the "answers"...read it, think of the correct question ("Who is...", etc.) and then click to see if you are correct. They're pretty easy if you know what a blog is, and not too hard even if you don't.
