Kurt Leucht’s Blog

Subtitled: How to increase DVD viewership and make more money

This is an open letter from a conservative parent to all the Hollywood-type DVD publishing executives and policymakers out there. I know you’re very busy, so I’ll keep this article short and sweet.

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As a conservative parent, I want to protect my young kids from all the sex and all the violence and all the potty talk and I could go on and on, but I won’t. So many of the feature-length animated films that are released these days are rated PG instead of rated G, and this fact is disheartening to me. There’s a valid and technical reason a particular film gets a PG rating rather than a G rating … it’s got stuff in it that little kids (read toddlers and pre-schoolers) should NOT be watching!

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I’m a big fan of watching a DVD before I let my kids watch it. If there’s a little bit of content that I don’t want my kids to see, I can always fast forward through the part if I know it’s there. But there’s usually too much questionable content in many of the rated PG films these days to try to skip past it all. My solution: I don’t rent PG films for my kids at all.

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But there is a better solution. And it doesn’t even require any fancy new technology to be invented. The old standard DVD format already allows the viewer to choose from multiple audio tracks. And I’ve watched plenty of action/adventure DVDs to know that it’s completely possible to play a totally different “cut” of a film, such as a director’s cut or similar. So why not put a rated G version of the film on the same DVD along with the PG version? This simple idea would not cost the DVD industry a lot of money to implement and it would surely increase their revenues, since it would obviously increase the viewership of their DVDs among the conservative young family population.

Thanks for listening, Kurt

(Anyone who reads this: Please leave a comment/response to this article below and let me know … along with the DVD industry … whether you agree or not.)

We got a car pass and watched Endeavour launch last night on STS-126 from the NASA Causeway viewing site. It was awesome!

Elijah waits patiently for the launch.  We got there almost 2 hours beforehand.  Notice the nearly full moon out the window.  A beautiful and clear night for a launch.

And we have liftoff!  The picture doesn’t do it justice, because it lights up the night sky as if it were daylight!

We could see it almost all the way down to the horizon.  Very cool.

Kurt

Recently I attended an IEEE technical conference in Big Sky, Montana. In case you didn’t know, Big Sky is a very nice ski resort located about an hour north of the west entrance to Yellowstone National Park. I mostly attended this conference because I was presenting a technical paper on a PLC software translation utility that I had prototyped. I seriously had no clue that the conference was being held at a major ski resort. It’s a really nice place. Here are a few photos. The main peak is called Lone Peak and it sits at elevation 11,253 feet.

After my paper was approved for this conference, I found out from a coworker (Glenn S) that it was a major ski resort. Luckily I grew up skiing in Colorado with my family and still had my old skis stored up in the attic. They hadn’t been used in probably 10 years, but they appeared to me to be in decent shape, so I packed them up and took them with me. My ski boots which were also stored in my attic for those 10 years were destroyed … from the heat I suppose. Mental note: Do not store expensive plastic items in the 150 degree attic! I borrowed some winter wear from a friend (Dave B) and did a couple half-days worth of skiing while I was there. Some photos are shown below. All the skiing I did in Colorado growing up led me to believe that I would never experience any better skiing anywhere in the world, but I must say that the conditions at Big Sky were better than anything I’ve ever experienced. This is a top notch ski resort and they take great care of their slopes.  On a side note: My bindings were so old the ski shop refused to touch them and by the end of a couple days skiing, one of my skis was starting to de-laminate.

Here is a short video I took while skiing down a trail right to my room. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_nHN09zgbc

One day when there was nothing going on at the conference, I drove an hour or so down the road to check out Yellowstone. Here are a few photos I took along the way. Sadly, Yellowstone was closed for the winter. I felt a bit like Clark Griswold in National Lampoon’s Vacation after traveling all that way to find the park closed. But I made the best of it and watched an Imax movie and ate dinner and did some shopping in the little town of West Yellowstone. The town was mostly shut down also, though. It was almost a ghost town.

Back at Big Sky Resort, one night while I was walking around the base of the mountain after eating at a local restaurant, I heard the cheers of a large crowd coming from the mountain. I followed the noise (and the stream of people walking that direction) to find a quarter pipe competition in full swing. It was pretty fun to watch. Luckily I always have my camera with me when I travel, so I took a few photos and also some video.

And here is a short video compilation from the Quarter Pipe Contest at Big Sky, Montana. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg3tpHSaQVg

So that was my experience at Big Sky, MT. It was fun and I would definitely do it again.

Kurt

I took a much deserved day off work on Friday and attended the Sun ‘n Fun Fly-In and Air Show in Lakeland, Florida with my buddy Les. It was a beautiful day for an airshow and this was quite an airshow.

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First we walked around and looked at all the homebuilt airplanes that were there for the fly-in. Then we walked around all the vendor exhibits for a while. Then we watched the airshow and it was quite impressive. Then after a dinner break, they put on a very cool night airshow. And after that, they put on the most spectacular fireworks display I think I’ve even seen in my entire life! It was quite a day. Here is a short video compilation that I posted to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UqFCnRzDso

And here are some of the photos I took:

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Kurt

The Gilchrist Educational Foundation had about 300 runners and walkers in their 2nd annual Light the Way 5K race this morning. The weather was cool and foggy which made it very nice for running. I walked the 5K rather briskly while pushing both boys in the stroller and “Team Leucht” completed it in about 46 and a half minutes I’m happy with that time since it was about 5 minutes faster than my walking time in last year’s race.
Complete race results can be found here at the Running Zone website.

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