Hawk’s Babble-Log

A DVD UPO is a User Prohibited Operation, as set by the disc authors.

When I buy a DVD, I buy it for the movie. I buy it because I like the movie and want to watch it again. UPO’s help to ruin this experience.

My Sony DVD player is programmed to prevent certain actions, as commanded by the DVD. I disagree with this philosophy. I bought the DVD player, and I bought the DVD movie, so why do I not have control? It seems the studios do not want me to have control. It may be that they consider that *they* still own my movie.

The studios also seem *extremly* paranoid about other people stealing their movies. If there were a way to prevent theft, it would have been implimented by now, don’t you think? Security is a relative thing. Absolute security (what the studios want) is unattainable. I don’t think they realize this.

Anyway, back to my UPOs. I put in a disc that I own, into a DVD player that I own, and I have to wait for the FBI notice to time out. I can’t hit Chapter Skip forward. I can’t fast-forward. I can’t skip to the menu. I can’t even pause or stop. These are UPOs. I, the *owner*, am not allowed to do this on my own DVD player, with my own DVD.

Okay, so I wait for the FBI notice to time out. Now I get the stuido’s logo, or insignia, or whatever. I can’t skip it. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen it. I have to sit there and wait for it to time out. I can’t do anything except wait.

Actually, that’s not exactly true. I can turn the DVD player off. But this does not bypass the UPOs.

Okay, so I wait for the studio’s logo screen (or whatever it is) to flash by on it’s own. Now I’m usually able to get to the menu. And if there are any previews, I can skip ‘em and head straight to the menu.

A friend of mine has some DVD ripping software which strips out these UPOs. I love it! Studios, are you reading? I friggin’ LOVE stripping out your UPOs! Now I am not stopped from getting to my movie, the one I bought and paid for with my good money.

And the sudios wonder why people rip their movies? I guess they’re just dense. Oh well!

I’ve been hunting around for a good calculator for a while. As part of this search (and before I picked up my TI V200), I downloaded a nice calculator called [The Haxial Calculator](http://haxial.com/products/calculator/), for Windoze (Windows). Thankfully, it also runs in Linux. They also have a version for the Mac.

The main design difference between this calculator and other calculator programs is that it’s designed to take advantage of the capabilities of a computer, rather than go through all the trouble to simulate a regular calculator device in a computer.

A very good example of a calculator device simulation for your computer is the [DreamCalc 3 Scientific and Graphicing Calculator](http://dreamcalc.com/). This sucker rocks, is easy to use, does graphs, has a ticket (history) window, and I would have bought it until I found the [Haxial Calculator](http://haxial.com/products/calculator/).

Here is a screenshot:

This is the standard calculator window. Many more screenshots are available on [Haxial's website](http://haxial.com/products/calculator/).

“Deep”, “Love Story”.

Actually, it’s a fun romp with big guns through monster land. Not exactly a chick flick, unless she just wants to stare at the boys. There was a subtle twist near the end that I didn’t see comming. I was quite satisfied with the ending, and I find myself wondering what’s going to happen next.

Good special effects, good music, decent characters.

I’ll probably buy it when it comes out on DVD.

Look what I can do with my $200 graphing scientific calculator!


Yes! My life is now complete!

I can get my ass whipped at chess by my phone *and* my calculator!

TIChess… kicking my ass… on level 1.

I discovered how to take screenshots on my V200:

During a graphing operation, I paused it and used the TI software to take a screenshot

Here I finally found the memory report

At this point, I think I’ve got four or so additional applications, two games (TI Chess and a first-person 3D shooter called Arena3D), plus a few variables and text files (well, StudyCards–more on that later).

I couldn’t get it to take screenshots from within the TI Chess. I guess I’ll have to use my camera for that.

More to come as I continue to discover.

Texas Instruments Voyage 200

This little sucker is so much fun! And I haven’t *even* scratched the surface of what it can do.

On the evening I got it, I upgraded the OS, put in a Periodic Table, *and* a global 3D atlas! It was cake with the TI Device Browser software.

- [education.ti.com](http://education.ti.com)
- [ticalc.org](http://www.ticalc.org/)

This is the main menu, or the home menu.

A simple sine wave in split-screen 2D mode.

This is a formula to find the Force in Newtons using two values in Coulombs divided by the distance squared.

This is the Periodic Table I mentioned earlier, but in Super Compact Mode so that the entire table is displayed. There is a better mode where half of the table is displayed, with the element symbols. Each element is loaded with info.
I downloaded this from the [ticalc .org archives](http://www.ticalc.org/pub/v200/) and put it on the calculator using the USB cable plus TI’s software on [education .ti.com](http://education.ti.com/). It’s written by Eric Marion and Jakub Poznanski of Gamdwellerz. It seems these guys have written a lot. I’ve only begun my quest!

This is the world globe software I mentioned earlier. I found it in the [ticalc.org archives](http://www.ticalc.org/pub/v200/). Putting it in the calculator was easy: drag and drop. Done. You can pan around and zoom in to a pretty good level of detail (vector maps only) with quite a few titles.

More to come as I continue to discover.

Bionicle is a Lego series of toys. They look pretty cool, but I never got into ‘em.

The movie is based on the toys, and the universe which has been built up around them. Visually, I liked it a lot. The graphics and effects were excellent. I liked the look of the film a lot. And the voice actors were fine, no complaints there.

The filmmakers did not take into account the people who did not know anything about the toys or the Bionicle universe. For these people, they’ll spend most of the time watching this movie scratching their proverbial heads, wondering what’s going on.

That’s a major outpoint, but also of note is that the story is realy weak. Or, to use a technical term: lousy. *Especially* when characters magically arise from death with no explanation. But hey, I guess it’s a kids movie. And in kids movies, you can’t have your major characters dying off never to be seen again.

In summary, it’s worth a rental if you’ve got nothing better, but I won’t be buying it.