Amazon.com now has a service called Unbox, which allows you to download video content, like movies and TV episodes, directly to your PC or TiVo. CSI: New York is among the TV shows they’re offering.

I haven’t tried the PC version, but I have used it with my series 2 TiVo, and I was quite pleased with how simple it was. The quality is at least as good as my cable TV, it’s commercial free, and I can keep the episodes for as long as I want. (Please note that some items are “rentals,” meaning you can only keep them for a certain amount of time. Most TV shows seem to be for “sale,” meaning you can keep them indefinitely, but read the information provided.)

I wouldn’t use this service instead of purchasing a whole season on DVD, but for $1.99 each, it’s a good alternative to waiting for reruns if you miss an episode.

If you are a TiVo user, you’ll need to go to here first to connect your TiVo and Amazon accounts. If you use a PC, follow the instructions for downloading the software you’ll need.

In the interests of full disclosure, yes, we’re an Amazon affiliate — it helps pay for this site and keeps it ad-free. If you use our links, we do get a small commission at no cost to you (and believe me, 3-5% of $1.99 is quite small). Mostly, I’m posting about this because I think it’s a cool service, especially if you have a TiVo.

Gary has been announced as one of the guests expected at the Celebrity Invitational Golf Classic.  This tournament and banquet, which benefits The Salvation Army in Southern California, will be held Thursday, May 31 at Trump National Golf Club in Ranchos Palos Verdes, California.

—-

Also, just a note about commenting here.  As you may know, blogs are the frequent targets of spammers, and since we changed over to this format last year, we’ve had over 8,000 pieces of spam hurled at us — several hundred a day.  Although nearly all have been filtered by Aksimet’s fantastic software and our registration requirement, it still burdens our server (even though you don’t see them, the comments are still stored).  To help prevent the spam comments in the first place, we’ve added image authentication.  Next to the comment box, you’ll see a 5 digit number you need to enter before submitting your comment.  We’re sorry for the extra step, but it’s necessary as part of our arsenal of spam-prevention tools.

We’re now syndicated on LiveJournal. Click on the icon to add us to your Friends list.

Gary’s birthday is this Saturday, March 17.  If you haven’t done so already and would like to leave a birthday greeting, please share your happy birthday wishes at our guestbook.

Edited to add:  This post is not the guestbook, so leaving a comment here doesn’t count!  Click here to sign the guestbook.

This isn’t really something I ever planned on adding to the site, but we’ve been receiving so many emails lately from people who wanted to express their thanks to Gary for all his work in support of our troops and veterans, I thought we might give it a try.

We’re going to experiment with a guestbook at which visitors can leave publically-viewable messages.  These can either be general ones about the site (hey, we always love hearing that you love visiting), about Gary’s work or talent, or even a message to Gary.  Maybe a birthday greeting! (It’s coming up on March 17.)

We can’t promise he will read each message, but we will make sure he knows the guestbook is there.   I can pretty much guarantee there won’t be personal responses, so it’s not a place for questions or anything that requires any kind of response.

Needless to say, the guestbook will be monitored, and anything inflammatory or inappropriate will be deleted.  It’s not a place to get into political discussions.  Gary’s work for the USO and veterans is a fair topic — the war itself is not.  Let’s also try to keep things in relatively good taste — yes, many of us think he’s very nice to look at, but let’s keep it to things you wouldn’t mind his wife and kids reading, okay?

Anyway, we’ll give this a try — if it seems to be of interest, I’ll add button links later on.  If you have thoughts, feel free to share them in the comments or in the guestbook itself.

UPDATED: More photos! Gary plus Jeff Vezain, Gina Gonzales, and Kimo Williams. Click “Read the rest…”

Good morning!

I was lucky enough to catch the Lt. Dan Band at the Galaxy Theater in Santa Ana, California on Saturday night. What a show — this is an awfully impressive group of musicians! They play a fabulous, diverse set, covering music from five decades. (Is there anything on earth cooler than Kimo Williams? I think the answer is clearly no.)

Gary has an easy, relaxed leadership presence on stage, but everyone gets a chance to shine. The result is a fantastic evening of music and fun. So watch this space and if the LDB comes to your area, be sure and go!

Said hi to Gary after the show, and he had nothing but the nicest things to say about this site. It’s really a reflection on all the people who have helped over the years, past and present, to make it what it is. I really couldn’t do it alone. And apparently we do a pretty good job keeping on top of things — “If I want to know something about myself, I just go there.” (Mostly kidding, but still? Best. Compliment. Ever.)

Sinisefan Glenda Cain was also at the show, and unlike me, she actually takes good pictures, which she is nice enough to share with us. So we’ll meet you on the other side of Read the Rest…

Read the rest of this entry »

This weekend, the following pages on the site underwent major overhauls:

• Ransom
• A Midnight Clear
• It’s the Rage
• That Championship Season
• Truman
• Forrest Gump 

In short, there are over 200 new full-size screen caps.
Enormous credit and thanks to Carol, for all the screencapping she’s done!  Without her hard work, this wouldn’t have been possible.
Enjoy!

You may have noticed that the news page looks a little different — we’ve changed our blogging engine from Blogger (which seems to be broken more than working lately) to Wordpress, which is hosted right here on our own server.

A few things to note:

• If you have the news page bookmarked, you need to change your bookmark to: http://sinisefans.org/news/. The old page (news.html) will stay around for a bit longer while we complete the changeover, but it will no longer be updated.
• If you are subscribed to a site feed through your browser or a standalone news reader, you need to update the address to http://www.sinisefans.org/news/feed/. If you are subscribed through Feedburner, you shouldn’t have to do anything, as we’ve moved the feed address there.
• You can register if you like, but it’s not required. The first time you comment, though, your comment will need to be approved before it’s posted. After that, your comments should appear right away as long as you use the same e-mail address (which doesn’t show on the site) each time you comment.
• A cool addition is the inclusion of Categories, aka Tags. You can see the list in the sidebar over on the right.  Each post will be categorized, and in addition to using the archives by date, you’ll be able to browse archives by category/tag too. For example, you’ll be able to see all of the articles tagged Forrest Gump, or USO, or CSI:NY.
• Unfortunately the news page doesn’t look quite as it should in Internet Explorer (it looks fine in Firefox, Opera, and Safari), but we’re still tweaking and trying to improve it. Thanks for your patience. (If you happen to be a CSS whiz and would like to help, please get in touch!)

Just FYI, comments are turned on for our blog entries, and we welcome your thoughts. Click the “Comments” link at the bottom of each post, and then “Post a Comment.” You don’t need to have a blogger ID (select “anonymous” if you don’t), but we do ask that you put your name at the end, just so we know who’s talking to us!

As you can probably tell if you’re a regular visitor, we’ve had a busy couple of weeks around here.

Summary of what we’ve done:

– New look for the site! (Yes, it’s long overdue.)

– Learned (just) enough CSS to update the template for this page so it matches the rest of the site.
– Added feeds for this page. �Use the links below to add a feed for this page to your newsreader, or to add our feed to your My Yahoo!, Google newsreader, etc.

– Error checked this page with a variety of browsers and operating systems — it works with everything we’ve tried except much older browsers (e.g. Netscape 4.7).

– Added new project pages for:

o The Forgotten
o The Big Bounce
o The Human Stain
o CSI: New York (more photos soon)
o Fallen Angel

– Updated the Stage & Screen page, checked links and updated the DVDs & More page, streamlined and updated the Links page, added Google site search to the Search page.

Next on the agenda is replacing the screen caps on the pages for older projects. (Hard to believe those were once state of the art, isn’t it?) We’ll�also, hopefully, be adding a feedback form.

Do you feel inclined to volunteer? Here’s where we need help:

o We’d like to install a custom cgi script for site search in place of the Google box. We have cgi access, but unfortunately not much of a clue about how cgi works.

o We could use a little help with screencapping, specifically The Dress Code and the new DVD release of My Name is Bill W. Contact us if you can help.

Anyway — that’s where we’re at. �We hope you enjoy. As always, feedback is welcomed, either by comment here or to sinisefans @ sinisefans . org.

In our ongoing effort to improve the site, we have new pages up for The Forgotten and A Gentleman’s Game and a refurbished page for Reindeer Games, with more coming soon! Many thanks to those who’ve contributed the new and improved screencaps.

Another E-Bay item — George Wallace on VHS, with the box autographed by Gary.

And a signed photo from Of Mice and Men.

Remember when I mentioned I had a few videotapes to auction? Yeah. Well. I’ve also found a bunch of pictures that were signed way back when, that I apparently, um, forgot about, like the OMAM photo above. So keep checking here in the coming weeks. I’d love to see these items go to good homes.

Our next E-Bay item is up! This week it’s an autographed VHS tape of Forrest Gump.

The December Newsletter has been posted! Congrats to everyone involved in this truly excellent issue!

Just a reminder: You can support this site, and help keep it ad-free, by using our links to purchase books, DVDs, videos and more at Amazon.com. Set your Amazon bookmark or Favorite to this address:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/garyswebinternat

We earn a percentage of each purchase made through this link, at no additional cost to you. You can increase the percentage we earn on each purchase by using the links on the Videos and More page to directly reach the item you’re interested in. Again, we sincerely appreciate your support!