Freezing on Friday

Date:                                Friday, October 15th, 2010
Word of the Day:            apocopate (uh\POK\uh\peyt); to omit the final sound or sounds of a word
Weight:                           217 pounds
Goal:                               lose 100 pounds in one year duration
Pounds to lose:                85 pounds
Waist Size:                      46.5 inches
Rowing Duration             77 minutes, 23 seconds

Well, we did it, we made it to Friday, and it is a cold one, hence the title of today's post.  I wouldn't say that it is bright and sunny, but it isn't dull either, there is blue sky but there are alot of clouds in it, I guess the weather quite hasn't made up its mind on what it will be like today, we shall see.

Well, I have only two days left here at the cottage on the lake, Zac,  Winter and I are heading home on Sunday as Zac and I have doctor appointments next week.  Zac will be returning to the cottage on the lake for the remainder of the month of October, but Winter and I will be staying home in Toronto.  It is getting far too cold up here and when you cross the lake on the boat, you feel the cold even more, it is much too much for me.  Anyway, I'm telling you now that I'm going home on Sunday as there may not be time to create a post for that day, so don't be too disappointed if you don't get a post for Sunday.


I will be going to see my general practitioner and I know Dr. Alladin will congratulate me on losing weight, that is, if I haven't gained any weight this week, I have indulged in eating a mini-bag of popcorn four times this week, shame on me.

I need your help out there, one of my readers gets my blog sent automatically each day to her, I don't know how I managed to do this, in any case, she is going to be away, actually she is away and has asked me not to send her the blog as her mailbox will get too clutered, well, I don't send it to her, like I said she gets it automatically, do any of you know how to stop her from getting my post automatically, please advise as soon as you can, please, this is most important.

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Gosh, Zac has made really good coffee today, some days the coffee tastes better than others, have you noticed this?

Well, there are only 71 days left until Christmas, 70 days, if you don't count today, it is creeping up awfully fast.  When I get back to the city, I am hoping to get most of my Xmas shopping completed, how about you, have you started yet?

And speaking of Christmas, Zac went shopping yesterday and he told me that they were putting up Christmas displays in the stores yesterday, see, its not just me advertising Christmas.

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Well, I am three-quarters of the way reading the book "Freedom," so I will soon be in the position to lend this book out, if I lent books out, which I seldom do anymore because of a certain someone not returning one of my books.Now that this has happened to me, I think of a quote I heard in the movie "Out of Africa," someone asks Robert Redford's character if he would lose a friend because that friend didn't return a book, and the character of Robert Redford says, "No, but he has," that's how I feel, so if you are guilty of doing this, ensure that you return anything that someone has lent you, they were kind enough to lend it to you in the first place, the least you can do is have the decency to return it!!!!!

Speaking of movies, this is the time to be going to the cinema as studios will be, or are doing it right now, the studios will be releasing their movies to cash in on the Christmas holiday, and to get a nomination for an Academy Award.

There is alot of buzz about Hilary Swank's latest movie, I believe it is called "Conviction," and is the true story of Betty Ann Waters.  Betty Ann is a woman who, after her brother is convicted of a crime he didn't commit, goes back to school to earn her law degree to help him prove his innocence.  Anyway, I love true stories on film, have I mentioned the movie "Hachi" to you?, I know that I've mentioned this movie a couple of times, its just I want you to see it, it really is a good movie.

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I had alot of trouble on Cruella this am., I just couldn`t get into it and my back started to get sore so I only did a little more than one hour, I prefer to do at least one and a half hours, oh well, there is always tomorrow, I`m beginning to sound alot like Scarlett O`Hara.

I have decided that today I`m going to talk a little about `Television.``

For the techies, here is a description:  Television (TV) is a widely used telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that are either monochromatic ("black and white") or color, usually accompanied by sound.

Commercially available since the late 1920s, the television set has become common in homes,( I have three in my household, not counting the three at the cottage on the lake,)  businesses and institutions, particularly as a source of entertainment and news.   Since the 1970s the availability of video cassettes, laserdiscs, DVDs and now Blu-ray Discs, have resulted in the television set frequently being used for viewing recorded as well as broadcast material.   In recent years,  Internet television has seen the rise of television available via the Internet, iPlayer   and Hulu.

In its early stages of development, television employed a combination of optical, mechanical and electronic technologies to capture, transmit and display a visual image.   By the late 1920s, however, those employing only optical and electronic technologies were being explored. All modern television systems rely on the latter, although the knowledge gained from the work on electromechanical systems was crucial in the development of fully electronic television.

The first images transmitted electrically were sent by early mechanical fax machines, (you didn`t know that, did you) including the pantelegraph, developed in the late nineteenth century.   The concept of electrically powered transmission of television images in motion was first sketched in 1878 as the telephonoscope, shortly after the invention of the telephone.   At the time, it was imagined by early science fiction authors, that someday that light could be transmitted over wires, as sounds were.

The idea of using scanning to transmit images was put to actual practical use in 1881 in the pantelegraph, through the use of a pendulum-based scanning mechanism.   From this period forward, scanning in one form or another has been used in nearly every image transmission technology to date, including television.   This is the concept of "rasterization", (this should be one of my words of the day,hehe)  the process of converting a visual image into a stream of electrical pulses.

A  23-year-old university student in Germany, patented the first electromechanical television system which employed a scanning disk, a spinning disk with a series of holes spiraling toward the center, for rasterization.   The holes were spaced at equal angular intervals such that in a single rotation the disk would allow light to pass through each hole and onto a light-sensitive selenium sensor which produced the electrical pulses.   As an image was focused on the rotating disk, each hole captured a horizontal "slice" of the whole image.

The first practical use of television was in Germany.   Regular television broadcasts began in Germany in 1929 and in 1936 the Olympic Games in Berlin were broadcast to television stations in Berlin and Leipzig where the public could view the games live.

Around the globe, broadcast television is financed by either government, advertising, licensing (a form of tax), subscription or any combination of these.   To protect revenues, subscription TV channels are usually encrypted to ensure that only subscription payers receive the decryption codes to see the signal.  Unencrypted channels are known as free to air or FTA.

In 2009 the global TV market represented 1,217.2 million TV households with at least one television, and total revenues of 268.9 billion EUR (declining 1.2% compared to 2008).   North America had the biggest TV revenue market share with 39%, followed by Europe (31%), Asia-Pacific (21%), Latin America (8%) and Africa and the Middle East (2%.)

Television's broad reach makes it a powerful and attractive medium for advertisers.   Many television networks and stations sell blocks of broadcast time to advertisers ("sponsors") in order to fund their programming, as if you didn`t know that fact.

Since inception in the U.S. in 1940,  TV commercials have become one of the most effective, persuasive, and popular method of selling products of many sorts, especially consumer goods.   During the 1940s and into the 1950s, programs were hosted by single advertisers.   This, in turn, gave great creative license to the advertisers over the content of the show.   Due to the Quiz show, (do you remember that movie `Quiz Show`)  scandals in the 1950s, networks shifted to the magazine concept introducing commercial breaks with multiple advertisers.   The networks effectively ended advertisers influence over television programming with this introduction.

Popular entertainment genres include: action-oriented shows such as police, crime, detective dramas, horror, or thriller shows.   As well, there are also other variants of the drama genre, such as medical dramas and daytime soap operas.   Science fiction shows can fall into either the drama or action category, depending on whether they emphasize philosophical questions or high adventure.  Comedy, my personal favourite,  is a popular genre which includes situation comedy (sitcom) and animated shows for the adult demographic such as South Park.

The least expensive forms of entertainment programming are game shows, talk shows, (do you think Oprah is aware of this, she should read my blog,) variety shows, and reality TV.   Game shows show contestants answering questions and solving puzzles to win prizes.   Talk shows feature interviews with film, television and music celebrities and public figures.  Variety shows feature a range of musical performers and other entertainers such as comedians and magicians introduced by a host or Master of Ceremonies.   There is some crossover between some talk shows and variety shows, because leading talk shows often feature performances by bands, singers, comedians, and other performers in between the interview segments.   Reality TV shows "regular" people (i.e., not actors) who are facing unusual challenges or experiences, ranging from arrest by police officers (COPS) to weight loss (The Biggest Loser).   A variant version of reality shows depicts celebrities doing mundane activities such as going about their everyday life (Snoop Dogg's Father Hood) or doing manual labour (Simple Life).

Television has played a pivotal role in the socialization of the 20th and 21st centuries.   There are many aspects of television that can be addressed, including media violence research .  In 2010 the iPlayer incorporated a social media aspect to its internet television service, including facebook and twitter.

With high lead content in CRTs, and the rapid diffusion of new, flat-panel display technologies, some of which (LCDs) use lamps which contain mercury, there is growing concern about electronic waste from discarded televisions.   Related occupational health concerns exist, as well, for disassemblers removing copper wiring and other materials from CRTs.   Further environmental concerns related to television design and use relate to the devices' increasing electrical energy requirements.

Topics coming soon:

Sex
Blogging
Andrea McArdle