It’s funny, every fourth year everyone suddenly seems to become a sports fan. OK, maybe not everyone, but certainly people seem to discuss sport a great deal more than usual during this time.

I rarely watch Olympic events but do make an exception for sports I might watch anyway. The exception to my exception so far has been brief but has included the table tennis final (mostly because it’s the Chinese Olympics, and China was in it, and it was on after something I was already watching) as well as the tennis final.

Other sports I’ve watched, and watch every now and then include boxing and cycling. Track and field, gymnastics and the even more obscure “sports” (dressage, I’m looking at you) are right out.

For me, though, the Olympics has really been another football (futbol, soccer, whatever) World Cup. The aforementioned viewing comes to maybe a couple of hours but I’ve watched at least three or four football matches. Mens, womens, whatever.

This evening, Argentina and Brazil play in a semi-final with the winner playing one of Nigeria and Belgium (who are playing this very moment; I suspect Nigeria will win). The Argentina/Brazil match will be, I expect, the highlight of tournament and probably more interesting than the likely Argentina/Nigeria final which will probably result in Argentina winning (again).

So, bring on the 2012 British Olympics World Cup!

With the recent demise of our long-lived Pioneer learning remote, I sought out a new all-in-one remote which would also control our Foxtel — something of which the older Pioneer remote was not capable.

After some searching, I found the Sony RM-VL600 remote which is considered a great buy for the price.  With the remote unavailable in Australia, and the price of Sony remotes here exorbitant (a two-generation old remote here costs around ten times the cost of the same unit in the US) I sought out the remote on eBay.

I snapped up the unit for what I consider a good price — around $35 landed — especially considering they’re about $70 on eBay in Australia.  Earlier, I’d also ordered a replacement for the Pioneer remote, which cost quite a lot more than both previously mentioned prices; still, I need it to perform some functions on the A/V receiver.

The Sony remote arrived first — and so it should, the delivery expectation was 5-7 working days; the Pioneer remote was 3-6 weeks — and as soon as I got it home I started tinkering.

Our TV, A/V receiver and DVD player had pre-programmed codes, and it was a cinch to learn our Foxtel and Xbox remotes.  Another great feature is the volume “punch-through”, which means that no matter which component you have selected, the A/V receiver always receives the volume up/down commands.  Very nice.

The next step was to setup some macros, since the unit has room for up to 16 commands on one button (certain buttons only).  I hunted the web for “discrete codes” for all of our equipment.  Discrete codes are often used in home theatres as they can send “power on” of “power off” commands, rather than “toggle between power on and power off”.  Sending a “power on” command to an already-on device simply leaves the device on.

It needs a little more tweaking, but I now have a button for “TV”, which turns on the TV, A/V receiver, sets both to the right inputs and then sets the remote to control Foxtel.  I have one which also does the same for our Xbox so we can watch downloaded content.  A third button is an “all off” which turns all our equipment off, regardless of it’s on/off status.

I could have purchased one of the Logitech Harmony remotes, but I don’t really like the “clicky” buttons, the requirement of a charger over regular batteries, having to use a website just to change the configuration and the screen is — to me — gimmicky.  Plus the cheapest unit is more than five times the cost of the one we bought.

It’s great to have just one remote again!

We’re sitting here watching Futurama this evening (episode: The Honking), and the number of nerdy-type jokes in such a short amount of time forced me to blog about it.

One of the characters, “Tandy”, is wearing a t-shirt with the label “Euro TRaSh-80″, which refers to the TRS-80 (also our first computer).  Later, one of the paintings in the haunted castle bears a painting of an ship’s captain, “Commodore LXIV” (Commodore 64 — also our second computer).  Shortly after, evil writing on the wall is 1010011010 which, once translated from binary to decimal is “666″.

Very clever, very nerdy.  Can’t believe I never noticed these small jokes before.

Late last night, while planted in front of the TV, the Original Series of Star Trek came on. I wasn’t particularly interested in watching but since there was not much else on other channels, I figured I’d give it a chance.

Around thirty seconds into the episode, a green-coloured lady appeared. Immediately I knew that she and Kirk would have some sort of on-screen romance since, as we all know, James T Kirk is a ladies’ man, no matter what colour their skin.

Around half way through the episode, the green woman appears in Kirk’s jail cell and professes her love for him. Check and mate.

A pity then, that there were no people in red uniforms beamed down to the planet.

The process for most TV shows to get on the air involves a pitch, a script, and then a pilot is made to try and convince the executives that the show is worth continuing. Most, if not all, the readers of this blog already know this, I’m sure.

In earlier years, most ‘green lit’ shows didn’t include the pilots as the first episode; it was often remade after some tweaking or ditched altogether. Sometimes the pilots would air in a special and more often, not. Some pilots never air at all, and are locked away forever, never to see the light of day again.

A few weeks ago, Justine and I caught the tail-end of a documentary about Adam West. The section we watched focused on West’s more recent years, when he was trying to break back into television (but didn’t feature Family Guy, so I suppose it must have been made before that show). West did a pilot for a show called ‘Lookwell’, which was co-written by Conan O’Brien.

Lookwell – in a way – reflects West’s actual life. The show focuses on an actor – Ty Lookwell – who, 20 years ago, played a TV detective named Bannigan (which is a running joke throughout). Now, out of work and bored, Lookwell tries to solve real crimes. The local police department gave him an honourary badge, which Lookwell flashes at every opportunity to show his ‘credentials’. Not to mention the crazy leaps of logic he makes.

Since we were looking at failed pilots, I also grabbed Heat Vision and Jack which featured Owen Wilson as a talking motorbike and Jack Black as a former NASA astronaut who becomes the smartest person in the world… during the day.

You can find both of these pilots on YouTube. I used a downloading service to grab the FLV then a converter (I forget which) to transcode them into AVIs.

Ahh yes, I nearly forgot. After dealing with Harvey Norman for almost a week, we finally have the new TV unit in our house, and it’s all functioning properly (finally).

Our new unit has “feet” which at first glance look like metal but are really just cheap shitty plastic. In addition, the unit was a bit too high with our new TV, so I removed the feet and replaced them with some felt (I got it at Bunnings, before someone tries a “where do you go to get…” joke) which I think looks a lot better anyway.

Only took almost three weeks to get a TV unit, what a pain. And thanks to Justine who pointed out to me that I wrote some of the stuff in this post that I wrote the other day, blogging can be a difficult thing sometimes. It’s not the first time I’ve written a post twice.

Yesterday and today I have been on the phone many, many times with Harvey Norman; they have not called me back at all when they say they will, and I have been expecting 4 or 5 calls from them until this point. Each time I call them when a reasonable time to expect a call has passed by a few hours.

The store has no replacement units in stock, and are not expecting any until late next week at the absolute earliest — probably the week after. They refuse to express one down from Sydney saying it’s too expensive (forget the fact I get servers couriered from there every now and then and they’re far more fragile).

Today, we went to the store to inspect their floor stock. I didn’t really want to buy it but if I want a unit this side of 2007 I think this is the only way it will happen. There are a few small scratches on the front but noway near the number on the unit we currently have unassembled on the floor in it’s box.

We did get a very slight discount, and “free” delivery and pickup of the old unit, and I don’t need assemble it, but this is all a very slight pittance when it should have been done right in the first place.

Moral of the story is: If it’s not in stock, don’t buy it from Harvey Norman.