Ever had one of those moments when you’re watching one of your favourite programs on TV, a big movie or television star is on screen, you look at their surroundings, and you’re like, “Hey, I’ve been there!”

Well, I had one of those moments two weeks ago while watching the programme Corner Gas on CTV HD. I was watching the episode entitled “Coming Distractions” when it came to the setting shot the show used to transition to the scene in the theatre. Lo and behold, that’s the very same theatre I frequent a couple times a week, which is less than a ten minute walk from home.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised when that happens, considering they mainly film in a town not an hour’s drive away from the city, but I don’t care. It’s still pretty cool, nonetheless.

Maybe it’s because it’s shown nationally during prime time and has huge ratings. It’s not the same as Puttnam’s Prairie Emporium, which never left the studio AFAIK. And as cool as they are, local cable access channels don’t count either.

As for movies, I had it a few times watching Just Friends, but less so during The Messengers and not at all during Decoy.

—

My apologies to Miss Judy Garland.

I’m at work today, and I took a break to get up from my desk and walk to the cafeteria to grab a muffin and juice. Normally, I enter through the side entrace, situated at the end of the L-shaped dining area, which requires passing by all the tables before getting to the actual cafeteria area where you line up and purchase your food. The dining area is one of the larger rooms in the building, and is often “comandeered” for larger meetings between people, though signs will usually be posted and/or the doors will be closed.

This morning, however, was a little different. As soon as I turned through the side entrance doorway, I spotted all the tables on the right hand side of the dining area had been converted into one incredibly long table, and was completely surrounding by people sitting and having a meeting. At first, I had to step back and see if there was a notice on the door, but there was not. Seems kinda odd to hold a meeting there during peak coffee break hours.

But it kinda reminded me of all that stereotypical imagery of Medieval banquets involving long tables occupied by royalty and nobility. You know the kind.

Anyway, it got me thinking. Usually, when you see those banquets scenes portrayed, the people are often only seated along one side of the table(s), with the tables positioned in one long row, semi-circle, or an open-sided square configuration. Portrayals always seem to imply this is for a courtyard of sorts or for entertainers to perform jokes, stunts, or music (e.g. the first series of Blackadder).

My question is, after having looked through the Medieval cuisine article on Wikipedia, I’m a bit curious how often or infrequently (if it even ever happened at all). Obviously, I’m mainly just talking about the aristocracy and rolalty, not the layity.

How often did they have meals in such grandiose fashion, and did they always just sit on one side or was that an invention of screen and television, so you could see the actors.

The reason I ask is because I wonder if that one side of the table always gets worn down more than the other. And if so, do they rotate the position of the tables in between banquets to save on supplies?

It was a sad day in Maguire history today. I finally put my Daeowoo 9000N DVD player out to pasture, and by that I mean “took it to the dump.” Had a lot of great memories with that DVD player. I applied a firmware to it that would let me play any region DVD that I wanted (so I could play my DVDs from other parts of the world of content that would never see the light of day here), and also disabled the macrovision (which never really mattered, as I only ever had it hooked up to my TV anyway) and UOPs (which let me skip those ads that some DVDs normally force you to watch. Bad DVDs, bad, naughty naughty…).

But I think I just wore out the poor thing. Mom and I both bought the exact same player, at the exact same time, at the exact same place, and hers still works great, but has never been used to the extent that mine has. Plus hers is situated in a basement which is a cooler environment all year round, while mine is above ground in a cramped bedroom that is always several degrees warmer than anywhere else.

The symptoms it first exhibited were longer load times, stuttered playback, and all round a generally noisier box than normal. At first I was able to workaround it by sometimes tilting the box slightly in one direction or another, but then I had to move it out of my cabinet altogether (thinking it might not be getting proper airflow and overheating), to me finally having to remove the outer case. Then lastly, a couple of days ago I went to go play a move after having not used the player for a few days, and it just wouldn’t play. It would keep spinning up and spinning up, desperately trying to read the disc, making all kinds of racket in the process, always worrying me that it was scratching my discs.

Finally, I got fed up and starting scouring the Web for a decent player from a reputable company that I could buy in town at a decent price and make region free. The one I ended up getting was a Philips DVP5960 from *ewwww* The Source. I don’t know what it is about RadioShack/TheSource and easily hackable DVD players, but that’s also where I bought my Daewoo oh so many years ago.

So far it does everything I could want it to do. The upscaling only works through HDMI, which I have on my TV, but don’t have a cable for (but that wasn’t really a driving factor for me anyway). It also has a USB port (apparently only USB 1) for playing video files of an external drive, but I don’t know if I’ll ever even use that.

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