respublica

A tribute documentary to The Hill neighborhood

Tonight at 7 Channel 9 in St. Louis will televise a documentary on The Hill. Most of us have been on The Hill at one time or other to eat at one of the many good restaurants. This film spends less time on the eating part and more on how this area developed, its history, and how it is seeing a  renaissance today.

We've been over there many times through the years and it always appears to be a strong, stable place. Homes are not big mansions, but are meticulously cared for, and I always believed I could happily live thee.  I'm looking forward to watching this tonight if I can keep Dale off the remote for a football game or some such.

Better TV watching

I have to say, I am enjoying having a Roku set up on two of our TV's. One in the bedroom and the other in Dale's basement book area. I was reminded of just how much I like the Roku this morning while reading a story on Ina Garten recipe. Ina at one time had a long running show on the Food Network, one of many interesting chefs and average cooks. Now this Network is mainly competitions with people crazily scrabbling together a meal and then being judged against others.

But with Roku, I can get all the old favorites on the past shows. I love being able to see actual chefs cooking and explaining as they go along, often with great humor. These are shows we watched back in the 90's and early 2000's and they are still viable today.

The same holds true for HGTV, such a relief from the incessant renovation shows on these days. Way too much Property Brothers and Love it or List It.

A second Roku

Well, if one Roku is good, a second is better. Right? I am picking up another today for Dale's basement TV. He spends so much time down there working on new bookshelves and a multitude of other things I believe he needs something to watch when he takes a break. We have a tv down there which is not usable without some sort of input and I've read that a second Roku will work with the first. If I enter my original account info, what we have in the bedroom we will have in the basement.

I hope this is true. And, in the basement Dale can watch that horrifying Roman History series he loves. It's just too violent for me, those old Romans were merciless.

Coming late to the movie party

We've had a Netflix subscription for some years but never really bothered with it. For one thing, our main TV isn't a smart TV so it hasn't been possible to use streaming attachments. That is why Dale surprised me, really surprised me, the other night when he went to bed and ended up watching series on ancient Roman history. I asked him how he got that on the bedroom tv which is smart and has Roku. He said, I found it on Netflix.

Frankly Dale is not the most tech savvy person and the fact that he found Netflix on the Roku and this Roman series boggled my mind. I guess we will now be regular Netflix users, better late than never.

What I found on Netflix that same night was this really fun cooking series, The Great British Baking Show. It's very entertaining in a very British manner. This was after Dale finished with the horrendous violence that took place during ancient Rome. It was a nice change of pace.

Too much cable interference at the conventions

We've been attempting to watch each political convention. Last week the democrats, this week the republicans. What has been frustrating is how the cable people have been inserting themselves into the proceedings as though we can't interpret what is happening for ourselves. They have been talking over whatever is being presented on the convention floors.

I about had it last night and found I wasn't the only one bothered by this, many on twitter were exasperated as well. Many began advising to just go to CSPAN where they showed just the convention speakers with no commentary. I'm not sure I even want to bother anymore, cable people believe they are the be all and end all of what is going on for each party.

No volume, he said

We still haven't had our smart tv replaced which was broken by the movers, but having the Roku set up in the bedroom has been very handy. But I had to laugh at Dale's vague understanding of most tech things. He got rather addicted to watching a Netflix series on the history of ancient Rome while we were still at the seminary. Once we got the Roku going this week he was thrilled to go back to watching how horribly the Romans killed each other. That was my impression on the series anyway.

So last night he went up to the bedroom, pulled a chair in front of the tv and watched all this again. Each episode is 45 minutes long and I'd guess he watched two last night. I went up to see how he was doing and was surprised he was sitting so close to the screen and he said, "the sound is really low on this series for some reason, the only way I an hear it is to sit right next to it. He couldn't find the volume control on the actual tv. When he finally shut it down for the night I went up and looked at the Roku remote and sure enough, there was the volume up and down control on the side.

Too late for him, but there is always another day.

I conquered the Roku

I'm pretty pleased with how easily setting up a Roku player was. I didn't believe I'd have the smarts to do this. I was initially stymied by the fact that I couldn't find the remote to our bedroom tv and wasted at least half an hour going through some of the boxes in the basement we hadn't unpacked yet. And, the tv in question did not have an obvious turn-on button. But when I finally found it and got it on, it wasn't long before Roku set up screen came on. 

I did a lot of going up and down stairs to set up passwords and such on the laptop, but everything I did went immediately to the roku screen on the upstairs tv. I was daunted by the time it will take to get the stations we watch most. Roku screens are filled with all kinds of program icons and choices. It seems, and you may know, Frank, but each of the programs we want in there have to be activated by going to their websites. It takes time and I'm not at all sure where they end up.

But we have some of the news channels and HGTV. Also Netflix. Today I'll try to make sense of how these show up on the screen. And, whatever shows we have on our Spectrum account will go to the Roku tv. That's cool. But I have to spend time choosing and activating the on the computer or my iphone. 

Even better the Roku remote does everything from turning the tv on and off to letting me use my voice to control it.

A new tech conumbrum

We've had to make adjustments to setting up our televisions since we moved back to Collinsville. Work has been done on the house and the cable line to the bedroom tv was taken out. We called Spectrum to have the line put back in and here lies the issue which is a mystery to us. The Charter guy came out and took a look around and then suggested a way of using that tv without an actual cable line.

I have no idea if this will work so I'm going to try to explain it here.

He told us the best and cheapest way to get that bedroom tv up and running was to skip the cable box and line and instead go out and get a Roku steaming player. Put that into an HDMI outlet on the tv and it will communicate with the downstairs cable box through our wireless network. This sounds too good to be true and I wonder if this was just his way of not having to go through all the work involved in setting up cable lines. 

I am going to go out and get the Roku, but I'm skeptical of the tv working with what we have and instead be filled with options we have to pay for individually. How does this work exactly? He said it is being done all the time now, we shall see.

The tv hooked up to the downstairs cable box is not a smart tv, the movers accidentally broke our only smart tv and will hopefully replace it. That had wireless the current one does not so I do not see how the bedroom tv will communicate with it.

While stuck at home, try boxing

We watch the morning local news every day, sometimes channel 2, other times channel 5 and we've become fascinated by KSDK (5) in St. Louis' traffic reporter, Monica Adams. Like many TV reporters, she's reporting from her home and it turns out she's quite the fitness fanatic. Most every day she is shown in her basement surrounded by all types of professional fitness equipment. Every day we're more amazed by what she's showing us what we can do.

We had a huge laugh when she focused on her professional boxing bag hanging from the basement ceiling. Rather several big boxing bags. She put on the gloves and began whacking the bag while describing how this can help our fitness. Another day the full basement was shown with all the machines. It has been quite an eye-opener and so different from other reporters who report in their kitchens or office in front of bookshelves.

Here is a link to all of her basement reporting. Scroll down to the videos and one is the boxing lessons. The others are great too even though not many of us could duplicate this.

What's cooking?

While spending all our time in the house these days just like everyone else, the thing which I've focused on is food. What do we have, what can we make, how long will it last.

I'd guess this is difficult for many people, especially those who don't ordinarily cook. If you haven't learned the basics of roasting, frying, baking, boiling, it has to be quite a learning experience. Back in the early days of the Food Network, the programs revolved around real cooks, chefs, etc, actually teaching us how to use knives for chopping onions, garlic, slicing meat. Also how to use vegetables-roasting, boiling, baking etc. When was pasta done. Then there was the baking-measuring, use of baking powder and soda, how to frost a cake. They even discussed which pans and pots worked best for what.

This was very helpful to me and the cooking stars did this in a friendly, often funny way and I learned a lot. Now the Food Network is all about competition among various cooks. Not really helpful. Now is a good time to bring back people like Ina Garten, Tyler Florence, Emeril Lagasse, Jamie Oliver, Giada De Laurentiis, Bobby Flay, Alton Brown, Rachel Ray, Martha Stewart and on and on.

If they can't be brought back for some reason, how about re-running their old shows.