Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Monday, July 1, 2024

DVD/Movie Collection Review: The Star Wars Trilogy

 


This one is one of the original DVD sets of the original Star Wars trilogy. It was a good set and had a lot of good bonus material, including the great Empire of Dreams documentary, that outlines the making of the entire original trilogy, with a ton of archived material. The only real drawback, and the reason that I got rid of the set when the blu-ray set came out, was that it does NOT include the original releases of the movies as they were shown in the theaters. You just get the special edition releases with all the edits and additions that Lucas did to the movies for the 20th anniversary of the original movie and leading up to the release of the prequel trilogy. Of course, Lucas famously hated the movies as they were originally released because they did not have the look he was going for because of the limitations of special effects when they were made. And, once the movies were released with all the digital effects that were available for him to use in 1997, he vowed that the original movies would not be released again. Now that was not quite true because there was a very horrible DVD release of the original movies that you can find online for an exorbitant price, but long ago went out of print. But, it was basically a transfer from the laserdisc release of the movies, that looked horrible, and a lot of people never bothered getting them. So, the only "easy" way to see the original versions of the original trilogy movies remains to this day on VHS for those old enough to have purchased the old VHS tapes and kept them all these years (and who still have a working VHS player). And, it does not seem that Disney is ever going to release the original versions of the movies as well, even though it easily could given that it owns the rights to everything Star Wars. So, assuming you have upgraded to blu-ray, 4k blu-ray, or switched to streaming, there is no reason to get this set anymore.

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