Categories: Top :: Arts :: Day By Day :: Entertainment :: Living :: Personal :: Technology

Cinema: A couple very brief reviews
Mon, 24 Sep 2007

As the baby rounds past the 6mo mark we're slowly growing accustomed to our new form of what normal is. There have been some 'deer-in-the-headlights' moments when the theatres show movies we wish to see and likely won't for quite some time, but all in all I'm pretty happy with how things have shaken out. I even made a point of sitting down with my laptop to catch a couple of films. That was something.

I meant to post longer reviews after I'd seen the films, but alas time has been fleeting. At least I got to see some :)

300

Well, sometimes all of us just have to enjoy movies about big sweaty gladiators. As a kid, I was veritably steeped in Spartan city-state lore so I was even vaguely aware of the recorded history about the battle depicted in this film. But really I just wanted to see it because Frank Miller (of graphic novel fame, such as Sin City which you may have also seen a movie translation of) wrote it. (I'd like to insert a snide comment about Robert Jordans death too, but mother said I should speak positive words of other people.) Anyway, its all CG action, has great beards, shows some excellent shields mashing excellent opponent faces. Its a story of 300 (and some) versus an army 20 times that size.. but they're Spartan, and they kick ass. Its like Die Hard with spears. Awesome. (Again I meant to have some sweeping tear-inducing epic of review, but in the end, sleep dep leads to this mess :)

Hot Fuzz

Just awesome. This comes from the folks who created Shaun of the Dead so it had to be just excellent, and it is. See it now! Essentially three movements in this film -- first, the story of a sueprcop in London who makes his compatriots look bad so is shipped to a quiet little village. The dialog is snappy and with some plays-on-a-theme it works out very nicely to show the copper going stircrazy, seeing crime in every facet of every day life. The second movement is really where he does find crime in every corner of the place, and mayhem breaks out. Lastly, the final movement is where they start pwning old lady faces. You just can't get enough of two fisted pistol shootouts with old ladies, right? Again, the sleep dep changes whats in my mind to what comes out of my fingers but suffice to say - the film is quirky and subtle with fun dialog, and leads through, just as Shaun did, amusing unusual circumstances. With violence and laughs. I love these guys.

[ Category: / entertainment / cinema ] [link] [Comments]

Quotes: One from the willy
Mon, 24 Sep 2007

It came up today; it bears repeating:

Cut word lines
Cut music lines
Smash the control images
Smash the control machine.
- William S. Burroughs

[ Category: / day_by_day ] [link] [Comments]

Blogging: Following the tail
Fri, 07 Sep 2007

Sure, competition and variety is a good thing, but it annoys me that people lurk about on myspace, livejournal, facebook and every other site I don't care about :) No way am I going to repost all my blog entries in 5 places, which is why I've always kept them on my own server - and no ownership problems this way either. But I did make this handy little script that pushes updates over to LJ so friends there could see my blog posts if they like without having to open up my site directly. Do I now have to figure out some way to do the same for facebook?

Because it sure seems like LJ is dieing to me :P

[ Category: / technology / blogging ] [link] [Comments]

Apple: Way to go Apple, you mp3 player is the new PDA
Fri, 07 Sep 2007

Teething keeping us up half the night aside, my brain is a little more functional today. I thought it very interesting when Apple announced the iPod Touch -- an iPod (mp3 player) with a large touch screen, a pile of storage, and good multimedia abilities. Despite the fact that PDA sales have been punished severely the last few years (and the whole product class being ignored by the manufactuers like Palm, Dell etc), Apple has just created the next PDA.

Apple for all their greatness and faults is pretty fearless these days, and they've demonstrated time and time again a willingness to take an aging concept and attempt to revitalize it, just as they've done most recently with the cell phone. We can be sure Apple knew they were just buffing up the iPod, but sneakily hoping to enter the PDA marketplace from the side..

I've not really looked into the iPod Touch specification to know how its data entry will work -- is the touchscreen simply for yes/no and kicking up applications and picking songs, or will the device feature an onscreen keyboard like the iPhone does? I doubt they will take on a grafitti-like stroke solution for fear of being branded a PDA and losing their core music-loving tech-fearing community. Regardless, the unit does feature a calendar and addressbook (with synchronization via iTunes) and media playing, which as everyone in the PDA industry knows.. account for eight tengths of what that gadget set are used for. Perhaps Apple has nailed it -- sticking to a minimal core of the highest demanded features and yet staying closed to shun the other uses will let them recapture a lost marketplace. People already carry iPods and phones, whereas carrying a PDA and phone is redundant in so many peoples minds.

Naturally, as with the iPhone, the devices are closed (for now) to developers.. more or less. No iMail port sure opens up an angle for developers to make a buck with, and gaming of course.. but I'm sure Apple will make some strategic partners (Bejewelled on yet another device), and open up web applications if.. confirmed - yes, the iPod Touch will include wireless. Sweet.

It'll hopefully be sold in Canada, even..

Way to go Apple .. while everyone else dropped the ball literally for years, as I've so often lamented and ranted about - you've picked it up again.

Please don't lock us developers out. We like to nibble on your pie.

[ Category: / technology / apple ] [link] [Comments]

Day by Day: Drive-by machine coma
Thu, 06 Sep 2007

Permit my mind to wander, as it was another night with only a ocuple hours sleep and as all know.. blogging only occurs under sleep deprivation mixed with caffeine.

As distant as they come, every once in awhile a thought enters my head that might be credited to a book read for highschool. I mean, I was never forced to read Moonfleet like so many of my contemporaries, but I was cojolled (greatfully) into Day of the Triffids and Animal Farm and so forth. There was a short story we read in English class .. "The Machine Stops" or somesuch which I thoguht was very slick. Somehow it ties into Ellisons "I have no mouth yet I must scream", but thats just because I am compelled to bring it up. Anyway, as our little girl slowly (quickly!) grows, taking control of her motor functions and studying the amazing details in every day items, I wonder about her future and where its all going..

When up last night voyaging around the quiet depths of semi-sleep I got to thinking about "The Machine Stops" (wherein a society is so utterly dependant upon a computing complex for all of lifes requirements, and it fails, they meet their fellow man face to face for the first time.) and it occurred to me again that our interface to news, to research - and more alarmingly - to friends and family - is through a one way non-social technology. Being the generation that I am, the Matrix generation, the Intertube application-building generation, means that life was so fascinated with the technology as it blew open so many years ago. We geeks lived and breathed this new domain, never questioning the very laconic nature of it all .. we were as gods to a new world, building applications and adopting this newfound openness assuring ourselves it was better, faster, more efficient, more open.. more human despite being electronic. Coding is cool, is power, and half the time.. humanity be damned. We were better. It hit right there .. if it enabled _more_ communication, how could it restrict it? We created the new systems, so how could we be limiting ourselves? We geeks had finally gotten ours -- we were cool, we wore a lot of black, and it was better than microwave ovens (we knew, since it was better than BBSes.) We'd all created communication systems whereby you chat in real time (IM and IRC), or at reader conveniance (email, usenet, websites), and could transcend language, culture or handicap. Technology was full of awesome again.

Naturally, we all figured this would save time. Be more efficient. Or cooler anyway, and that at least came to pass. Like flying cars and civilian jetpacks, efficient and technology will never really come to pass -- we all know that our laptops are faster than ten year old supercomputers, and yet loading up your latest email can take a few seconds. Anyway, all this so-called efficiency is also inbred -- we're better, we're faster, and we're doing more.

Really, humans are better at doing less. I mean, sitting around a fire, going fishing, all these things we tend to frown upon until we do them and remember how appealing they are.. heck, just taking a break to sit out in the sun feels gorramned great Doing more is taking a piece of our humanity away. We're social creatures, not machines. We should be making this technology work more for us and not making us work more. Youtube, flikr and so forth are very enabling and have created whole new aspects to our culture and exchange.. but its really an illusion at control, while we are born and registered, learning from TV and the net, going to school and being marked by technology, and peeing in cups for work. We've both created the illusion of freedom, and taken it away. Fine, its our generations fault, I can deal with it.

But once in awhile I think about my poor daughter who will be hooking into the Great Portal in the not too far off future. She'll be a wonderful and open creature, not yet formed in her minds pathways, ready to absorb so much information. And she'll have a tonne of it, all shovelled into her brain, performatted and predigested.. and unavailable to change. I suppose for children it has always been this way.. but with so much at her fingertips, will she be forced into its way of thinking? Given technology makes our food, provides our transportation, and is the basis for learning.. have all the alternatives simply vanished? I know in my life I've always admired from afar sitting around the campfire and singing. Its not my thing, but I know the option is there. But it is increasingly distant..

Anyway, I'm a tech guy. More than most people, for sure. So it is ironic as a PDA developer I don't trust PDAs; as a well read time management nerd I don't trust time management systems. And as a coder who taps away at a keyboard for every waking moment, to have ideas like this pop into his sleep deprived head at 5am .. is .. well, to be honest, its sleep dep talking :) I mean, we've created this system which in and of itself is not directly harmful, or even backwards .. but are we aware of the future outcome? Just as all this genetic hacking on our food won't prove good or bad for decades after we've all been consuming it. We optimize by statics.. we're all min-maxers now, forever cutting away at the profits and pushing the curve here or there. I've often lamented about the lack of gargoyles on buildings, by which I mean taking the more fun or humoured or human approach to a problem, and not just working the numbers. It is a tragedy of our own making where our society stopped having fun.

The technology costs more than it gives. We always knew this, but know those little blue eyes look up at me, while I type away on my keyboard. And I feal shame for my part that I have wrought.

Course, its not all bleak; we've created much that is cool, and tied people together in new and exciting ways. We've evolved a little as a society. Let us hope that despite my being another number in the great cog my daughter will be more, so much more.

Yeah, like I said, late night thoughts. No need to reply, I know its tripe :)

[ Category: / day_by_day / philosophy ] [link] [Comments]