Recently I purchased a Blu-ray player. I had been wanting to better understand the places I've been reading about because of my exploration book craze and figured that since Meg and I won't be traveling much anytime soon watching documentaries was the best I could do. I find the player slow and really confusing to use, but the video quality is amazing. I've never seen my 50 inch HDTV look so good. It looks even better than over the air, broadcast HDTV. So far I've watched two documentary series from Netflix (for just $4 more a month you can rent Blu-ray disks from them). Last night I finished the second of them.



The first one I watched was the BBC's The Story of India presented by Michael Woods. The visuals in that series are really good. Michael Wood is easy to listen to and has a lot of enthusiasm. My only problem with the series it that it relied too much on modern images to tell a historical story. I definitely enjoy seeing how history is still alive in modern life, but this series over does it a bit. A similar one disc BBC documentary on a journey down the Ganges River looks equally as impressive.



The second series I watched (Meg did too) was Expedition Africa. I didn't see this reality show when it first ran on the History Channel and I'm glad I didn't because this way I got to see it in all its HDTV glory. The series was made for someone just like me. It's eight 50 minute episodes that trace the journey of Stanley's famous search for Livingstone in East Africa. Four modern explorers and about two dozen locals take the journey (unfortunately none of the locals are profiled in anywhere near as comprehensive a manner as the four Americans). The gear they used was modern and instead of ninth months they took thirty days (a obviously sponsored Subaru takes them through half of the territory). The bickering that goes on in the group is the standard reality show fare, but the scenery is flat out amazing. I can't wait to read more about East African exploration after seeing these disks! I hope similar series are made about other historical journeys, maybe an Amazon expedition or an Arctic expedition could be chosen.

I finished the penny drive pennies. 5,600 of them yielded twenty-six Wheats, fifty Canadians, one Bermuda 1¢ and one Bahamas 1¢. The Wheats were:

1939, 1941, 1942, 1944, 1944S, 1945, 1946(4), 1947, 1950D, 1953, 1955, 1956(5), 1957(2), 1957D(4), 1958D

Found: 1 penny (at the Tiger Mart)