Casual Geekery

ThunderCats! HOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

2010-06-03T12:15:00.003-04:00

Usually I am not excited about old movies or TV shows being updated and refreshed, but I found myself excited by this news from the Gizmodo via the Hollywood Reporter, that Thudercats is going to be coming back on Cartoon Network. Check out the link to Gizmodo and Hollywood Reporter

I remember liking the original ThunderCats when I was little. I used to pretend to be Tygra with my magic whip that made me invisible. I would wake up early to try to watch it, but for some reason i could never consistently watch it. i would just see random episodes here and there with little cohesion in what i was watching. Now i get another chance as an adult in indulge my inner child on these characters again. I have two fears however about this remake
1) Snarf - man that guy was annoying
2) it will shatter the good memories i have of ThunderCats from my childhood, cause it will suck.

I am happy to see its being made by the studio that made the Animatrix cause i dug that, and i also like Anime so maybe it will be awesome! I will definitely be setting my DRV to record this when it comes out!

I do hope though that they can come up with some new ideas rather than just digging up these old shows. Its fun sometimes but come on we need something new!

Why I don’t care that ATT is eliminating the unlimited data option.

2010-06-03T12:10:00.002-04:00

It was announced that ATT is no longer going to offer the unlimited data option for smartphones on new contracts, and frankly I don’t care. First off I never go anywhere near 2gb on my Iphone. I think on average I use about 700mb a month of data (I check it a whole bunch via the ATT app). I don’t really stream music or movie on my Iphone, and I don’t usually use it for pulling down large files, that’s what one for the three computers I have in my possession is for. Now it’s possible that when the new OS comes out that allows for multi tasking I will end up consuming more data with things like Pandora, but I still don’t think I will be getting close to the cap. If I owned an Ipad and I was streaming movies or TV on it this might cause me to leap up in usage and maybe I will have an issues with the cap, but at far as I am concerned if you are using the Ipad to stream movies and TV you should probably be on a wireless connection which would not eat into your data cap. In most places I can think of where I would want to whip out my Idevice and stream some TV I would have access to some kind of wireless connection so using the data would not be required, I am hard pressed to think of a place where I would really need to stream that TV show now where I would not be on wireless. Ok, one of the changes that is also coming out in the new OS is the ability to actually tether your phone to a computer or device. This is nifty, but again I do not think I will be tethering my phone to a computer and then doing data intensive things, I mean yeah if there was no cap I wouldn’t have to care, but as more ATT customer will tell you the network kinda blows, so if my choice is to stream that Stargate episode to my computer on a tethered connection or to wait till I am on a wireless connection I will wait till I am on the wireless, and off the network. I don’t really have much of a personal used case for tethering, but I am sure there are people out there that will use the hell out of this feature, but again I don’t think the use will be for things that require a lot of data usage, more for things like; getting your email at the airport, or in a cab.

Second as I mentioned ATT kinda blows. As more and more people buy Smartphones on the ATT network and use those smart phones for data it will degrade and degrade the network. Putting this cap in place, a cap that ATT claims will not affect like 90% of users (me included) it will hopefully help with the network congestions. It will make people more responsible with their data usage. Now I guess the claim could be made that since ATT already has the problems they have and already almost no one is reaching the cap it might not help at all, but if more and more phones come on the network they eat a bigger and bigger chunk of the pie even if they don’t use more data than the current users. This does not give ATT a free pass to just keep things they way they are they need to spend the time and the money to boost their network and increase the bandwidth and the reliability of the network as a whole, which leads me to my penultimate point as to why I don’t care that they changed the policy on the data plans

Eventually I think that these networks will get to a place where it will be possible to offer the unlimited data package again, granted it will probably come back as a more expensive option, but I personally believe that it will be back.

Lastly this will end up saving me money. When I bought the Iphone I had to bundle it with the $30 a month data plan, if I can shave off a few bucks a month with a plan with a cap that I don’t think I will ever reach I am all for it. Granted my contract has more than a year and a half on it so I will get to enjoy my unlimited plan till I need to renew, and who know what phone or provider I will end up with when that happens.
So there is my 2 cents on the ATT data plan change. In summary I don’t care.

The Hobbit Dream Team

2010-06-01T11:12:00.007-04:00

So you've probably heard the news that Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro has stepped down as director for the much delayed Hobbit movies. This is really disappointing since he has already shown he's a great director of fantasy movies. So who would be a good replacement? Here is my DREAM directors for this movie:

Zombie Jim Henson - With movies like Labyrinth and Dark Crystal in his wheelhouse, Jim Henson is an obvious choice for one of the best fantasy stories ever told. His creature workshop could breath new life into Tolkien's middle earth. David Bowie as a sexy Gandalf?
Why it won't work: He is dead.

Tim Burton - Movies like Sleepy Hollow and Big Fish suggest a director who could do this, but self indulgent movies like Willie Wonka suggest otherwise. If we could get a time machine and grab Tim Burton before he got too big for his britches and decided he can just stamp his own stylistic nonsense onto any franchise he wishes no matter how great (batman, planet of the apes, willy wonka oh god), then it would work. Why it won't work: No part for Johnny Depp

Terry Gilliam - Movies like Baron von Munchhausen and Time Bandits have the feel you want in a fantasy movie. Amazing sets and whimsical characters, made his movies awesome
Why it won't work: His incredible bad luck would be compounded by the bad luck this movie already has and it would create a black hole

Wait who directed HellBoy? He would be great!
Why it won't work: That was Guillermo del Toro you moron.

George Lucas: You know that time machine I wanted to grab for Tim Burton? Do that with him, but grab him hot off the heels of producing Willow.
Why it won't work: jar jar baggins

Peter Jackson: He did a stellar job with the LotR trilogy, but I was happy to see that he wanted someone else to direct the hobbit. The Hobbit was written in a different type of language than LotR so it would be fitting for it to be told a different way on film. It needs some more stylistic charm to it than the LotR. Some time has gone by and he could probably do that now. He could look at it with fresh eyes, and pull off telling this story the way it needs to be told.
Why it won't work: Currently because he says he won't do it.

I really hope Peter Jackson caves and takes the reins on this one, or someone comes out of obscurity to hit it out of the park like he did for LotR.

Still Hope For Better Off Ted? Probably Not, But We'll Try

2010-05-27T19:58:00.002-04:00

http://www.hitfix.com/articles/2010-5-27-better-off-ted-fans-should-pray-for-a-short-nbc-finals

Long story short, if the NBA finals don't go to game seven, we get the last two un-aired episodes.

If you have never seen this show, season 1 is on Netflix Instant Watch and it's got a great cast, excellent joke delivery that doesn't stop to explain itself, and was solidly written.

I'll leave this list of outtakes (they had to make a PC version for ABC obviously but filmed the naughty bits) to prove my point.

Season Wrap-Up: Community, Season 1

2010-05-27T14:20:00.004-04:00

First off, fuck CBS and fuck Big Bang Theory for putting the next season in Community's timeslot. Way to take more ratings away from shows that deserve them. But I digress.

If it wasn't for Community, Modern Family would be my favorite new show. As it stands, Community kicks everything else in the teeth. The season ended last week and some people were disappointed, others speculative.

Love is in the... uh...

Let's go over the finale and the episode before it. I'm including the episode prior to the finale because Modern Warfare really blew things out of the water in terms of the show's humor and tight writing. A lot of fans were curious how they could outdo such a great episode.

I wouldn't say they came close. However, with season 2 on the way, there still had to be some kind of closure to the show that leads it into next fall. And I think for how intense Modern Warfare was, it was jarring to go back to the usual Greendale. Once you get that out of the way, English As A Second Language was classic stuff. Jeff deconstructing Annie and using Abed's love of movies to deter him from giving in to her charms is brilliant. Senor Chang's mental breakdown leading to a fight with Jeff on top of his smashed Lexus with a keytaur is not something I can say I saw coming. Despite Chang's lost teaching status he's still on the roster, and the study group has moved to taking Anthropology next year. It maintained the same bar of quality and referential humor, while paving an excuse to keep the group together.

A roll of quarters, why?
Speaking of keeping the group together, Pascal's Triangle Revisited was a very interesting episode. Troy learns that living with Abed would be a bad thing for their friendship (as noted by eating a gigantic cookie as the episode goes on). The dean's fetish for dalmatians comes full force, Jon Oliver returns as professor Duncan and tries to hit on everyone, and Britta competes in the Transfer Queen competition, as noted by the banners on all the contestants that say Tranny Queen. One of the contestants is listed as Danielle Harmon, get it? Tranny queen? Never mind. But speaking of Dan Harmon, his love for trolling his fans knows no bounds. A conflict happens and Jeff has to decide between Britta and professor Slater as they both love him.

Now, here Jeff makes a point, and I think there is something in the air that's plagued multiple season finale writers (HIMYM and 30 Rock made the same conclusions about finding yourself). Jeff is undecided because Britta is the kind of woman who fits the slob lifestyle he lives now, but Slater fits the sophisticated lifestyle he wants. In the end, he picks Annie. The Community slashfic groups on the internet probably spontaneously combusted. This is one of the ways Dan Harmon trolls his audience, and I love him for it.

So what does this mean looking ahead? The show often retcons itself by stating flat out something's done and over with, so I'm not worried. Duncan probably spiked the punch or something stupid will come along and everyone will back off and go back to normal. While some shows suffer from a reset button every episode, Community manages to keep it up by letting the base study group be the launching point for something ridiculous. The words "Last week, on Community" aren't words I'd expect to see on-air, and it's sort of comforting knowing every time you tune in you will be rewarded with something great.

Moving to the entire season, it's had a flawless run. There was a lot of dissension among the ranks over the episode Investigative Journalism due to everyone hating Jack Black, but to those people I say you're an idiot for not realizing that Jack Black's whole purpose was to be deliberately annoying, showing the group that they don't need a wacky fat guy who kicks. Sometimes I think the meta jokes might have flown by, but I've been saying it all season long: Community is a niche show. It fits a specific sect of nerds and people who have been cramming media and popular culture into their mouth like a buffet table at a feeder convention. If I had to guess, I'd say people who like MST3k probably make up this demographic a good bit.

But while it appeases a specific audience, it does it well. Some shows like Big Bang Theory feel like they wrote the word "nerd" on a piece of paper and started a bullet point list on how nerds act based on what people thought of them in 1985. We're all still socially awkward, but we have so much pop culture on our side that we are disappointed when someone doesn't get our references, and Community challenges us in that respect. There are so many layers in most of the jokes. The first one that comes to mind is Jeff and Troy dressing Pierce up as the Cookie Crisp wizard, leading to this line:

"It’s not a meteor, it’s a cookie wand! Me and Jeff made it because it made you look more like the Cookie Crisp wizard! Which is not even a reference I get, because the Cookie Crisp mascot wasn’t a wizard when I was kid! It was a burglar!"

Without getting too distracted, if you're reading this blog, you probably already watch or should watch this show. It may have not had perfect ratings, but it had a perfect season. It's inspired debate and discussion, most of which end up being solved with "you're thinking about this show too hard." Years from now there will be people assuming this show is an indulgent guilty pleasure, but a guilty pleasure means it's something you wouldn't normally watch. This is a show practically catered to you. Enjoy it.

Season Wrap-Up: Modern Family, Season 1

2010-05-26T12:32:00.004-04:00

Of the new shows that came out this season, Modern Family brought back the family sitcom. It finished its first season last week with a great finale.

This is one of the funniest things I have seen in my life, hands down.

The finale was billed as a three-parter, which doesn't make sense given the previous two episodes were linked together when the family vacationed to Hawaii, and the finale was about a group photo back home. These were all amazing episodes regardless. I really wish I had something negative to say about the past season as a talking point, but it's been a consistent level of comedy from start to finish. Ed O'Neill never lost his comedic touch and the faint glimmers of Al Bundy still live on in Jay Pritchett. Ty Burrel is both adorable and retarded as Phil. Eric Stonestreet and Tyler Ferguson play the best TV gay couple ever with Cam and Mitch and it never stops being laugh out loud hilarious when one or both of them panic uncontrollably. Everyone is just into their role perfectly. Much like Community, the cast outside of the show acts practically like a family, and I think when you have a cast that are very good friends and lob jokes at each other off the set, you get actors that work naturally together. And for a show about a family, that is really essential for selling some of the crazier things that have happened on the show.

I keep my wallet in my front pocket, so that's what that is.

But back to the original point: the family sitcom has grown stale for a while. Watching an episode of The Middle before Modern Family comes on is like night and day, and one thing I've liked about the better new shows lately is they're adapting to a more updated form of comedy. Yes, you're always going to have your 2 And A Half Mens and things you label under Stuff Old People Love For No Apparent Reason, but there will always be people reinventing the wheel. I really don't think a premier season for has gone off this well in a while, I mean they renewed the snow in January, and on average gets 9-10 million viewers each week.

AND YET BETTER OFF TED GETS CANCELE- okay I need to get off that train, but I'm going to be bitter about ABC until the season 2 DVDs are released and I can watch the final two episodes.

Overall, Modern Family has a grounded basis in well-known sitcom stereotypes, but refuses to indulge in them. You can passively watch the show from the distance and point out, "oh that's the bratty kid, that's the nerdy kid, that's a dumb dad," and so on, but it isn't until you sit down and watch that you see that there is a lot of complexity to all the characters, and that is revealed only when they interact with each other. Phil trying to find something in the garage and tripping up is one thing. Phil trying to find something in the garage and tripping up as his wife reads the list to the symptoms of ADHD, matching Phil's actions, is amazing. If there are two or more main characters on screen or playing off each other (whether they know it or not, like the clip above), it's like comedic alchemy. You know the end result will be a work of art, even if you're unsure about the ingredients going in.

Season Wrap-Up: How I Met Your Mother, Season 5

2010-05-25T16:40:00.003-04:00

I am sort of on the fence for this season of MIMYM. I might be biased having watched seasons 1-4 and half of season 5 in a row, but this season was very haphazard in how it handled the characters and their interactions.

I am Christophe... Doppelganger.

Let's get the finale out of the way first. There was a lot of charming moments, but also a lot of awkward ones too. The episode felt longer than it was and I was worried that Marshal and Lily were going to put off having a kid for even longer. But in the end, Barney and Ted are still where they are. Robin choosing to stay in New York was an advancement of her character, but a predictable one. And let's face it, "put a baby in my belly" is a very awkward line to deliver in anything. Probably even a porno. But they did it twice.

Despite my complaints it was really funny. Barney's attempt at being his own doppelganger was great, as was his plan to have sex with everyone from every country. The episode was light on callbacks, the only one I can remember off-hand is Ted thinking he can pull off being a blonde (much like the boots). And wow does he look terrible as one. I'm glad someone in the show finally advanced their lives, and Ted's speech about how the gang became their own doppelgangers was sweet, and the fake-out soon after made me laugh but also want to slap the writers for tricking me so well.

I guess I had two major things that didn't sit right with me: I can understand that Lily is seeing what she wants to see cause she's ready to have a child, but at the same time, isn't it kind of cruel to lie and indulge her in seeing Barney's doppelganger? If the situation was that she kept seeing Barney everywhere, then I could sympathize with the rest of the group, but four months? Wouldn't it be more of the right thing to do to admit the doppelganger promise was just silly? It really seems out of character for everyone to lie to Lily, especially Marshal. And about something she has to spend 9 months carrying, moreso when it's an Eriksen kid.

Second thing ties into the rest of the season: Nothing happened. Robin had her ups and downs but ended up single and living with Ted. Ted bought a house but the only mention of it died in the same episode it started. There was a lot of one-shot episodes this season where everyone tried something different, then settled back to usual. Robin was the only one with a dynamic change to her character, but it didn't get a lot of screentime so she still felt like her issues were in the background. Torturing Barney in Slapsgiving 2 was great, but has Lily's father been back or mentioned since? It's a random thought but when I look over this season I keep seeing episodes where something happened, and it was never mentioned again. Nothing was added to these characters.

I think the continued success and seasons of the show might start to kill it. It's still extremely funny, but it doesn't need to constantly reset it self and essentially stalling. Every time Ted meets someone, it's always a different person every episode. He hasn't had a consistent girlfriend and it's easy to forget that the show is all about Ted. I was hoping Judy Greer would be Ted's girlfriend for a while after the end of The Wedding Bride (that and in the hopes of a future breakup episode with the line, "Say goodbye to THESE!"), and yes one episode isn't enough to tell that, but throw me a bone here.

Over the summer I will probably watch through the series or at least this season again just to get a better judgement call on the whole thing. I just don't want to see this show fall to the wayside after 4 strong seasons and one really funny but roundabout season. It's too early to pan it, or to make that decision until season 6. I'm probably being greedy, but I wanted something more, and with the show's namesake, that's not much to ask.

Goodbye Lost, you ruled.

2010-05-25T15:26:00.001-04:00

Last Night on Lost

2010-05-24T15:39:00.002-04:00

Note: I don't think there are any spoilers in this I tried to not give anything away as some people have not seen the episode

As I am sure you are aware last night was the last episode of Lost. I don’t usually write about this kind of stuff but I feel like adding my 2 cents. First off, I really liked the ending. If you hated it I am sorry you spent 6 years watching something only to decide that it didn’t meet your outrageous expectations. I say outrageous for a couple of reasons.

First on a show like Lost where there are lots of mysteries and strangeness people have built up ideas in their head as to what explains the mysteries and when the writers endeavor to put answers to those mysteries they are not going to be as cool at the answers you have made up in your head. One of the reasons books are usually better than movie because the books allows you some wiggle room for your imagination to fill in the cracks.

Second NO ending is every entirely satisfying! Can you name a single TV show or book that after you partake of the massive journey from the beginning to the end you were totally happy with how it ended? Cause I can’t think of any. Take every Legend of Zelda game, you spend all this time running around solving problems, you defeat Gannon and then either the world is reset or some other crazy thing that basically makes all your effort for nothing, but you had a good time getting to the end (except of water temples). Endings by nature never live up to the events that took place before the ending, because it’s an Ending! There is nothing more after that, there is no more room for interpretation or surprises, it’s over and people have issues with things being over.

Third, Lost was never about the answers. Lost was always about the questions, if you thought it was about the question you are wrong. It’s not answers that make things interesting, questions make things interesting. We (myself included) thought what we wanted was the answers, but the answers either just lead to more questions, or to answers that put a final nail into questions, some answers were good, and they needed to at least touch on the big things, but for them to go through and try to answer everything takes the fun out of it. The “Island” is mysterious and that is what makes it cool, Lost is not House, there does not need nor should there be an explanation for everything. I have heard the argument that this is bad storytelling, people basically bitching that since they wrote things into the plot they had to answer them, I totally disagree, there are thing in the plot that needed to be answered, but there are many other things that are purely there to flesh out the idea that the Island is a mysterious place where things beyond what is dreamt of in your philosophy (Horatio) are possible. Science tries to find the answers to things, with the seeker of that answer embarking on a quest to get those answers through trial and error. TV is not like that, the audience does not try to find the answers, no amount of theory or trial and error is going to affect the answers, we get the answers when the producers and writers decide to give them to use, and since we don’t really “earn” those answers, I don’t consider sitting in front of a TV screen a justification for earning something, any answer is going to be unsatisfying, especially if that answer is different than the answer you imagined in your head. That was one of the best parts about Lost, sitting around sounding like an idiot to anyone that did not watch the show, and trying to figure out what is going on. For me this was half the fun of Lost, I loved watching the show, but after I watched it I couldn’t wait to discuss it with other fans or check the Lostpedia for some crowd sourced info and theories.

Finally, Lost, depending on when you started it was a 6 year trek. If you have decided that you hated the last episode you are doing yourself a disservice. You are letting something be ruined for you because it didn’t live up to your impossible expectations. Lost is over and we got the ending, remember that it is not the ending that is important it’s the journey that got you there, so if you enjoyed watching the show, “let go” and chill out on the ending. I would be too bad to have something you have enjoyed for 6 seasons, be ruined by 2.5 hours of content, and you know what? If you really hated the answers you were given, re-watch the series, and just don’t watch the last episode and the Lost can continue on however you want it.

If you can think of anything as epic as Lost that has a satisfying ending let me know… but I doubt it

Viacom just ejaculated into my Netflix

2010-05-23T15:09:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the lack of TV updates, I do plan on doing season wrap-ups this week for a couple of shows and to complain about next season's terrible scheduling (namely CBS screwing over Community by putting Big Bang Theory in the same timeslot). Waiting on How I Met Your Mother's finale to air which apart from Glee ends my TV season entirely.

But Viacom just released a TON of things from Nickelodeon and Comedy Central. All of The State, Chapelle's Show, Reno 911, Rocko's Modern Life, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Strangers With Candy, Upright Citizen's Brigade, Stella, Ren & Stimpy, and a boatload of standup.

And District 9 was added as well.

But really folks, if there's one thing I want to get across, it's that you should all watch Avatar in its entirety, and now nothing's stopping you.

Nerdsploitation

2010-05-20T11:19:00.011-04:00

This is a guest post by Sam

There are two shows that seem to reign supreme in the province of geek comedy: Futurama and The Big Bang Theory. They’re the ones with the jokes for comp sci guys, physics guys, chemistry guys, and the seven women who have overcome their inborn inferiority in the sciences to be able to understand astrophysics jokes .[really Sam, REALLY?-whaler] I should point out right away the following: first, I’m no expert in either show. I’ve watched a bunch of late night Futurama re-runs, and I pick up on some of the self-referential humor and running gags, but my level of knowledge of the inner workings of the show pales in comparison to my knowledge of, say, Arrested Development, pre-cancellation Family Guy, or expert methods for picking up women (alcohol is involved). I know even less about The Big Bang Theory, for reasons that will become clear. In short, don’t crucify me for my inaccuracies, everything I say here I’m reasonably confident I read about on the internet at some point. That being said, I can without a doubt say that Futurama is objectively a far funnier show. Some people think that humor is subjective, that hey, they might even like The Big Bang Theory more; they are wrong. The difference lies in the way both shows approach their geek humor.

The key to a geek comedy is that it must appeal to both geeks and non-geeks alike. At the very least, it has to appeal to geeks in different fields. It can’t be so dense and undecipherable that only PhD candidates can get the jokes, it has to be broad enough for the 50% of America that is by definition below average can get it. This means that the plot can’t rely on an understanding of science to make sense, and that a percentage of jokes need to have broad appeal as well. Here is where the first difference between the shows appears.

Futurama is descended from the Simpsons, which, before the Y2K bug destroyed the world’s computers by forcing web 2.0 on us, was the funniest show of all time. Back before Homer and Marge just had random bizarre things happen to them before a celebrity guest star intervened, The Simpsons had strong plots, superb sight gags, and some of the best 22 minutes episodes of comedy known to man (see: King-Size Homer, Marge vs. The Monorail, Homer at the Bat, etc. etc.). Futurama carried on this tradition, creating robust characters that weren’t just stereotypes (it would be hard to cite precedent for drunken robots and lobster doctors), stories that explored an imaginative non-utopian, not quite dystopian future, and quick witted humor that functions across demographics, thanks to fish-half-out-of-water everyman Fry. The writers were able to create believable characters in a somewhat believable universe, and were able to coax real drama out of them (perhaps the best illustration of this is the episode “Jurassic Bark,” which has pretty much the saddest ending ever since Old Yeller).

The Big Bang Theory has none of this. It’s created by Chuck Lorre, who, instead of pulling a Groening and creating The Simpsons first before making a geek classic, chose to create Two and a Half Men first, commonly regarded as the lowest common denominator of TV sitcoms in the history of the medium. Groening is a geek at heart, and Futurama is his homage to sci-fi. Lorre is a hack first, and The Big Bang Theory is his way of making fun of geeks by making a bad TV show starring that guy from Rosanne. The problem with The Big Bang Theory is, well, everything. The plots are fairly standard sitcom plots, the characters are about as stereotypical as is possible, and it seems that every joke follows the standard setup-punch line-topper format. If Chuck Lorre had made The Wire, it would have just been black people eating fried chicken in front of a live studio audience. I wish I could cite extensive specific examples, but I just can’t seem to sit through an entire episode. I’ve tried. I want to be able to like this show. I like the idea of shows that are “smart” and “geeky.” But this one just isn’t. In my head, it’s always playing like this , and you can imagine how that feels.

Which brings us to the one specific difference in how the two shows treat their audience. Both make strong claims about being scientifically accurate, but it seems that the big joke in The Big Bang is that these guys are nerds. They talk funny, they cite random science facts, and the way the show glosses over the less than well written jokes is by making them too dense for the average viewer, who just picks up on Sheldon-citing-an-obscure-statistic-because-he’s-a-nerd. Here’s a sample from the show’s pilot:

Penny: I'm a Sagittarius, which probably tells you way more than you need to know...

Sheldon:Yes... it tells us that you participate in the mass cultural delusion that the sun's apparent position relative to arbitrarily defined constellations at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality.

Penny: Participate in the what?

The joke seems to be that she doesn’t understand what he’s saying. There’s nothing actually funny in what he says, it’s factually correct, there’s no joke in there. If you strip out the fancy talk, it can be re-written as:

Penny: I'm a Sagittarius, which probably tells you way more than you need to know...

Sheldon:Yes... it tells us that you believe in astrology, which makes you stupid.

Penny: I am stupid!

More examples glommed from the show’s quotes page on Wikipedia? Sure!

Sheldon: I'm a physicist. I have a working knowledge of the entire universe and everything it contains.

Penny: Who's Radiohead?

Sheldon: [after twitching for a minute] I have a working knowledge of the important things.

That one is apparently implying that geeks and nerds don’t listen to perhaps the geekiest, nerdiest band on the planet. How about:

Penny: What about Howard and Raj, how did [Sheldon] become friends with them?

Leonard: I don't know...how do carbon atoms form a benzene ring? Proximity and valence electrons.

Penny: Well yeah sure, when you put it that way.

Let’s just be clear what’s happening here: Leonard is apparently comparing social interactions to chemical processes, because he is autistic and doesn’t know how to relate to people. If he’s implying that proximity and electricity (maybe a spark of it?) are what bring friends together, ok, I’ll half buy that. But the joke once again shows through in Penny’s line, when she subtly informs the audience that you don’t really know what was said, just that it was super nerdy and she is stupid. The secret to all of this is that what Leonard says isn’t funny. He’s just stating a fact. The joke is that it’s got science words in it, not that it’s actually a funny comparison.

A final note before we move on from the land of autistics hanging out with dumb blondes: there’s a blog written by one of the science consultants on the show that explains some of the theory behind what you see on TV. This is all well and good, and they do have some science in there, a positive. But, the science is in there as science, not as humor. The most recent post points out that their whiteboard has chemical reactions for rocket fuel written on it, foreshadowing Sheldon playing with rocket fuel. That’s a neat little easter egg, but it’s not funny, it’s just… equations in the background. And it seems a lot of their science is treated this way: it’s not a science punch line per se, it’s just there as a side note to lend credibility.

On the other hand, Futurama, rather than bludgeoning you with nerdiness, weaves both broad jokes and geek jokes in seamlessly. The little nuggets in the background are funny little commentaries or asides, not just references to science. For example, Cartridge Unit, Cymbal-Banging Monkey, Sinclair 2K and Lisa are all obsolete robots. They’re all funny as characters, but their names also reference actual obsolete computers (or, in the case of Cymbal-Banging Monkey, toys), so unpacking the geek parts yields to a bonus joke, not just random equations. Soylent Cola “varies from person to person.” Bender has nightmares about the number 2. There are countless little flourishes like these that are actually jokes, not just science for science’s sake, and I’m sure the die-hard fans can single out the best of them far better than I can.

In the end, it comes down to Futurama actually being made for its audience, respecting their intelligence, and giving them something for it, while the Big Bang Theory just has a bunch of unfunny science in it to give it “geek appeal.” Of course, the unwashed masses will always trend towards “smart shows” that make them feel more comfortable in not knowing things, and shows like Futurama will bounce from time slot to time slot, network to network, trying the patience of those who love it. But I suppose we true geeks can take quiet comfort in knowing that we’re secretly right, our show really is better, and that those moron geek fans of Big Bang are laughing at a show that’s just blatantly making fun of them.

Nifty Facebook Privacy Tool

2010-05-19T15:44:00.003-04:00

I figured i would post about this quick. I came across this tool from ReclaimPrivacy.org, which if you use when logged into Facebook will give you suggestion on how to change your privacy settings. It pointed out somethings that I had overlooked when i recently went in and changed my privacy settings. Is it any wonder that i and others miss some thing when the privacy settings resemble this infographic from the NY Times.

I will probably run it again when Facebook changes the privacy settings again, which you know will happen even though they are "promising" to make the the settings more clear and more simple to use.

Work is kicking my ass

2010-05-12T11:53:00.002-04:00

Work is kicking my ass at the moment, but i will post something as soon as i can. Stupid real life getting in the way of posting in my blog

NBC Thursday Night 5/7: He Said, Fully Erect

2010-05-07T11:10:00.004-04:00

I am running on 4 hours of sleep so apologies in advance if some of this sounds disjointed.

Community S1E23 "Modern Warfare": I would like to announce the death of television. It died in a furious rage of paintballs and chaos and Dan Harmon is responsible for creating an episode so good, that TV isn't watchable anymore.

Greendale is hosting a paintball tournament, and the person who wins was going to get a blu-ray player, but that was stolen. So instead it's TBD. Troy wants that TBD bad. Jeff, uninterested in all of this, takes a nap in his car. 1 hour later, Jeff wakes up to see the school in ruins and paint. In walking around a post-apocalyptic Greendale he is assaulted by Leonard. Abed swoops in with Pitch Black goggles and wall-runs in front of Jeff, shooting Leonard. From here Jeff learns what has happened. The TBD prize is now the opportunity to choose all your classes for the next semester before everyone else, and it caused a frenzy. Meeting back up with Troy, the three students take out the Chess Club and come across Pierce and Star-Burns, who are stealing all the snacks from the vending machine. Wanting to be with the popular group always, Pierce shoots Star-Burns in the side to join them. But then, Troy, Jeff, and Abed need to take a piss, and they come across Shirley, Britta, and Annie.

These gifs speak for themselves, really.

The study group is ready to finish off the last of the competitors, knowing fully that when that is done, they will have to turn on each other. There are discussions of giving it to Shirley no matter who wins, which Jeff isn't going to do. Running outside, the group gets ambushed by the Glee Club, taking out Troy and Annie. Using Pierce as bait, he gets shot up in favor of the remaining team taking out the enemy. Sitting around a barrel fire, an ambush occurs from a group of roller-skating disco students, but not without a Warriors reference. Shirley and Abed get eliminated, and it's down to Jeff and Britta. It's now late in the morning and the dean just wants the game to end. He hires Senor Chang for the job, and he's a douchebag that brings his own equipment. Jeff and Britta, who are under a lot of pressure, wind up inadvertently having sex, and afterwards Britta uses it to pull a gun on Jeff. Jeff, too clever for his own good, made sure to remove her magazine first. But then... A CHALLENGER APPROACHES

No seriously, what movies did they NOT reference?

Britta, in a sacrifice to Jeff, takes the plunge to end Chang's hail of bullets, leaving Jeff alone. He takes it to the dean, who is happy to say he has a DVD player for Jeff! But that isn't enough. He wants that priority registration. And shoots the dean. Wrapping up, Jeff gives the priority registration to Shirley, but she has to pretend like she has gout since it violates school ethics policy.

They could and ended the episode right here and I would be fine.

This was an incredible episode. For months fans who has been following Dan Harmon's twitter were curious to see how awesome the episode that went grossly over-budget would turn out, and it really dampened the rest of the night. Parks & Rec was great, but it felt like a shadow compared to Modern Warfare. Everything does. If you have any love for any action movies, from Predator to Pitch Black to Hard Boiled and even Face/Off, this episode has it all. I'll say it every week if I have to, if you're not watching this show then there is a big gaping hole in your life.

Hulu: Community S1E23: Modern Warfare

Parks & Recreation S2E22 "Telethon": Despite being overshadowed by the greatest thing TV has to offer, P&R was really funny. Leslie signs everyone up for a telethon that runs from 2AM to 6AM, and she spent all last night making shirts for everyone, so she hadn't slept in over 24 hours. Much like how I feel right now. The sleep deprivation is solved by snacking on lots of Sweetums bars, which leaves Leslie more crazier than she started.

clipboard mouth. CLIPBOARD MOUTH

A block of sugar, indeed.

Leslie entrusts Tom to pick up Detlef Schrempf, an NBA player, as the celebrity guest, but not before Tom taking him to his club and starts drinking heavily. Mark in considering proposing to Ann, while Ann is considering dumping Mark, both of which have told Leslie about their plans. Leslie first tells Mark he should propose for the telethon since it will be a memorable story, but when she hears what Ann wants to do, she breaks down and isn't sure how to handle it.

Meanwhile, Ron Fucking Swanson skimps out to go sleep and we find that he has a condition known as "sleep fighting."

Have you ever seen this man sleep? It's like an underwater ballet.

Ron wakes up enough to do a segment on how to cane a chair, which causes the telethon to LOSE money. Tom is still MIA with Detlef Schrempf, and it's nearing 6AM. Desperately trying to pull things together, Leslie tries several ideas to entertain the audience in the last remaining moments, like recapping her top ten favorite episodes of friends, and attempting to drink 8 glasses of milk in 3 minutes (to which Ann stops her immediately, since she'll die). Other acts inclue someone doing the worm, and Jerry on piano. Finally Tom arrives and declares to the viewers of Pawnee that he is very, very drunk. Detlef offers a $5000, putting them above the goal, and to a well-deserved sleep for Leslie. After she drove onto Ann's lawn.

This was a very hectic, chaotic episode and Leslie really took control of the whole thing. It was one disaster after another and I was reminded of her more neurotic side from the first season, except with added sleep deprivation and a massive sugar rush. Everyone got to have some fun moments and while Leslie held the reins, there wasn't a moment of thinking "where did that character go?" I wouldn't place it in the same tier as Hunting Trip or Sweetums or Possum, but there wasn't a moment that didn't make me smile the whole way through.

Hulu: Parks & Recreation S2E22: Telethon

The Office S6E24 "The Cover-Up": Truthposting here, didn't pay attention to most of this. There was some really funny interaction in the beginning with Jim and Pam messing with Dwight, and it's always nice to see Zach Woods bring some of the same asshole charm he had with Chad from In The Loop.

Sorry for the lack of review, I usually spend this half hour making dinner!

Hulu: The Office S6E24: The Cover-Up

30 Rock S4E20 "The Moms": Everyone's mother is in town for TGS, from the actors to the execs. Jack has to deal with Colleen trying to play a hand in his women troubles, Liz is wondering if she should just try to get married and not waste time waiting on Astronaut Mike Dexter, Jenna and her mom are having a conflict on what to wear, Lutz's mother is literally Lutz in a wig and a sweater. Tracy, who doesn't know his mother, has to have another actor come in to play the part, and Tracy protests. Jack tried to use Kenneth to distract Colleen, but being the mastermind she is has no trouble distracting Kenneth.

The big part of this episode was Liz, when she finds out that her mother passed on her true love instead of the man she married. Her true love being Buzz Aldrin, who guest stars. Liz meets with him and finds out he missed his window of opportunity, and would put Margaret through hell to still be with her. Then one of the most adorable, yet awesome things ever happens:

I don't know about you but I would LOVE to yell at the moon with Buzz Aldrin.

Eventually Jack caves in ans asks Colleen to help him with his love life. And for once, she doesn't have an answer. Jenna and her mother sort out their wardrobe differences, and seeing how happy they were, Tracy decides to accept his fake mom as his mother. The episode ends with a song and to stay tuned for the Mother's Day episode of Bitch Hunter. Fakeout to Bitch Hunter credits, than snap to Marriage Ref. You bastards. I want it to be a real show.

Much like last week this was a cute episode but didn't have too many solid jokes. The two callbacks to Bitch Hunter were great (PUT THE MIMOSAS DOWN... BITCH). I dunno, usually I'm defending 30 Rock left and right this season but this episode felt watered down a bit. It's taking a slight turn for the serious but I think I'm starting to understand why people are not liking the Jack/Liz dynamic. In older eps where Floyd and Liz's other loves came into play the show is still a priority. At first the disconnect was subtle but the final shot of the end of a TGS show during the credits made me snap out of it and see that. TGS is now no longer a part of the show anymore, and I'm still liking 30 Rock, but it needs to get back on the rails for season 5 before it goes from likable and cute to taking off in a different direction.

Granted, I say this as I oogle over a show that spends most of its time not caring it's taking place at a community college, but the writing is so solid and tight to make the backdrop meaningless to the jokes and the delivery. Newsradio is in a similar vein, no one cared about the backdrop being WNYX because it was so well put together. I used to think 30 Rock was in the same boat but it's starting to lose focus, and I don't want to see that happen.

Hulu: 30 Rock S4E20: The Moms

Film: Not Quite Iron Man - Seven Independent Releases To Watch For This Summer

2010-05-06T10:51:00.011-04:00

The summer movie season could be said to officially open tomorrow when Iron Man 2 debuts in the USA. That means three to four months of superheroes, big action, and 3D. But there are several independent or limited-release films that can give you a break from all the sound and fury of the summer blockbuster. You already know about movies like Toy Story 3 and The Last Airbender, but here are seven movies you might not know about yet:

Please Give - Opens April 30.

Nicole Holofcener tends to make films about real women. The women in her films are familiar, flawed, charming, annoying, sweet, smart, impulsive - in other words, they are every bit as mutli-faceted and complex as anyone you might encounter in real life, something that is unfortunately not often seen in onscreen women, especially during the summer season. This film features one such woman named Kate, played by the wonderful Catherine Keener. Kate runs an antiques shop that she supplies by buying furniture cheap at estate sales. She tries to teach her daughter to not be materialistic, while she herself wants the same things her daughter wants, she suspects her husband (Oliver Platt) is not being faithful, and she is trying to reconcile her own desire to live well while dealing with the poverty she sees on the street outside her door. It's a comedy about value systems colliding, upper-middle class guilt, moral contradiction, and unsteady familial bonds. It is currently playing in New York and Los Angeles and will be opening in more theaters across the country.

Micmacs - Opens May 28.

With films like Amélie, The City of Lost Children, and Delicatessen, Jean-Pierre Jeunet has given us funny, quirky, slightly dark and off-beat films and his new film looks to be no exception. Bazil (Dany Boon) is an unlucky fellow whose father was killed by a roadside bomb and who is left with a stray bullet lodged in his skull which could kill him at any moment. Released from the hospital after his latest accident with no money and nowhere to live, he encounters a group of junkyard dealers who build him a home from the scrap in their junkyards and help him seek revenge on the weapons manufacturers who created the weapons which orphaned him and left him on the brink of death. This looks to be yet another darkly comic and charming adventure from a unique and interesting filmmaker.

Cyrus - Opens June 18.

The first film from Mark and Jay Duplass - The Puffy Chair - was among the first in the unfortunately named but interesting independent film movement known as "mumblecore." These are films characterized by extremely low budgets, non-professional actors, improvised scripts and explorations of personal relationships. Their new film ups the budget and brings in professional actors, but the heart and soul still appear to be in place. John (John C. Reilly) is divorced and still struggling to adjust to his life seven years after the fact. He meets Molly (Marisa Tomei) at a party and they quickly hit it off. However, in order to make the romance work, John and Molly must contend with Molly's grown son Cyrus (Jonah Hill). He is his mother's best friend and will go to any lengths to stop John's invasion into their life. Festival reactions say that the Duplass brothers have successfully translated their heartfelt, very funny and humane style to a higher budget, so this will be a movie to seek out.

I Am Love - Opens June 18.

Tilda Swinton is one of the best and most under-appreciated actresses of our time. Last year's little-seen Julia featured her fierce and unrestrained ability, and she is consistently the best part of any film in which she appears. This new film from Italy about a wealthy Milan family's undoing due to intense passion. Tilda Swinton is enough of a reason to see any film, but this looks to be a rich, intense, beautiful film and should give Swinton a chance to yet again show off her considerable talent. It's been getting overwhelming praise after every festival in which it has appeared.

Dogtooth - Opens June 25.

This film from Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard category at last year's Cannes Film Festival. It is about a family where the children are being raised with zero influence from or exposure to the outside world. Now, they are fully grown, still with no knowledge of the world outside their home. The reactions have been extremely excited, with several critics calling it one of the best films of the year already. It promises to be a disturbing, haunting, and beautiful experience.

The Kids Are Alright - Opens July 7.

Annette Bening and Julianne Moore star as the parents of two children who decide to seek out biological father, a sperm donor. When they find Paul (Mark Ruffalo), he quickly develops a relationship with them that threatens the family unit that Bening and Moore have worked hard to maintain. Reactions from critics have been overwhelmingly positive, with a consensus that it is a smart, funny and heartfelt look into a modern family.

[REC] 2 - Opens July 9.

I couldn't leave off all the sequels, and this one should be exciting for horror fans. It's the sequel to the 2007 Spanish horror film [REC] written and directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza who both return for this film. The new film follows a medical and special operations team going into the quarantined apartment building to investigate, and finding that religious weapons work to fight off the infected people. The original film was remade badly in the U.S. as Quarantine, but the original still packs a horror punch. With the same writing/directing team returning for this and a promise to upping the ante on the first film, this is one to check out. The first film is available on DVD.

These are all movies I am extremely excited to see, based not only on the pedigree of the filmmakers, but on reviews and reactions from their appearances at festivals. So as you decide what to spend your money on at the theater this summer, please consider scanning your local art house listings for some of these films. They aren't going to have the action and big-budget effects of Iron Man 2 or The A-Team, but they may just surprise you.

Paperless meeting

2010-05-06T10:07:00.008-04:00

Imaglide sent this article to me yesterday because he loves stories like this without even realizing that my boss was at this meeting!

I've never been to a big medical meeting like this, but I have been to a lot of clinical trial meetings. You are getting bombarded with information, and generally are given a lot of hand outs, even whole binders sometimes. Having to take a giant binder home with you on the plane can be a big pain. At conferences like this there will be posters for papers and research studies, there will be presentations, and there will be tons of vendors handing out their cards and information on their company or product. That adds up to a LOT of paper.

The integra foundation granted the organizers of the AANS (American Association of Neurogical Surgeons) the funds to provide each attendee of the meeting with an apple Itouch, making this the first paperless meeting in the organizations 76 year history. It was in the interest of going green, but also in the interest in introducing new technology to physicians. My boss pointed out that the entry fee for the meeting had gone up as well, probably to eat some of the cost.

I got to check out the itouch they were given, it was loaded with contact information for all of the attendees of the meeting. This is useful because collaboration is important in medical research, and it is impossible to meet everyone you want to at a giant meeting like this. Every scientific poster that was presented at the meeting was loaded on the itouch, as well as all of the meeting notes. There was an app so they could run polls during the presentations. It was really slick and well organized, the whole front page was apps made especially for the meeting. My boss liked that all of that is still on the device so it can be referred to later. There is more information, and a demo on the app at the AANS website. Also I checked, the app is available for free in the app store, this could be good for people who wished to attend the conference but couldn't.

Just from my immediate experience it has people excited about using this new technology. Since I have an Iphone already, there is already talk about how we can use these devices in our day to day work. Especially for screening research subjects when we are out of the office. Through VPN a physician or a research coordinator who gets a page in the middle of the night about a patient can review their images and vitals right from the palm of their hand. In another example of new technology being introduced to our workplace, one of the coordinating centers for one of our studies sent up USB headsets. We had been using GoToMeeting for monthly webinars, but we'd have to dial in on the phone. Now we will using VOIP for the meeting, which will integrate into GoToMeeting a lot better.

A lot of people might seem like they are very closed off to using new technology, but if you give them a chance like this I think it's exactly what the doctor ordered.

Paying for Privacy?!

2010-05-05T17:54:00.003-04:00

I think my tinfoil hat must have slid off my head a little bit cause I just had a totally moon batty idea.

Facebook is not a big fan of privacy, because they want all your information to be as public as possible so they can use that information to sell ads. Take a look at the links below, they do a better job of illustrating both how Facebook has changed in regard to “your” information, but also how the average consumer feels about their privacy Facebook and online in general.

From the EFF
From Gizmodo
From Mashable
From cnet

Basically if Facebook had their way everything on your profile would be public, we are getting to the point where the privacy controls are really just there to make people like me feel a little bit better. My moonbat theory is what if Facebook was to create a pay model? For a price you would have total control over your profile, you could fine tune all your settings just the way you want them. What makes me think this is that originally Facebook said they would not share any information you did not want them to share, but over time that has been loosened up to the point we are at now.

It’s the people that pay attention to tech and things like privacy that are always jumping up and down whenever FB makes one of these changes, but the general public just goes either unaware or they just don’t care. FB knows this, I mean why else would they have defaulted your settings to Public when the other option was to keep the settings they way they were before. They know that when people want to get on to harvest their freaking Farmville radishes they don’t want to read stuff, reading is hard, so they just click next, next, next and then suddenly they now have their profile public for everyone. FB designed the privacy change screens with this in mind.

On top of that they basically make trying to actually configure your settings so complex that I have even given up a few times to get them configured the way I want. The issue is that they kind of have us over a barrel; FB has become an important part of the internet, for better or for worse (I think for worse, but that’s just me) and to opt totally out of FB would limit your social networking abilities on the intertrons. So you can’t really delete your profile, granted they make that hard as hell to do as well, and you don’t really have any control over your information, so what’s a tinfoil hat wearing privacy nut like me supposed to do? Well, jump up and down and yell and scream every time they change the privacy policy, but if they were to let me pay a little bit to have control over my privacy, I would probably do it (it would depend on the cost). They could say that it is to offset the ads costs associated with the loss of information of use privacy nut jobs.

Imagine if in 6 month Facebook came out with this idea after continuously scaring the people like me, this would look like a breath of fresh air in terms of their usual tactics. They could then basically do whatever the hell they want after that with the information of the people that don’t care about their FB privacy.

Puts tinfoil hat back on head squarely

Who wants to be part of a 5-way?... On Skype

2010-05-05T16:07:00.001-04:00

Get your mind our of the gutter!

According to this post over at Gizmodo Skype the VoIP chat client is going to enable 5 way video conferencing. I am sure that the business impact of this will be analyzed all over the place, but I wanted to bring up a slightly different point about this new feature, and that is pod-casting. I listen to a lot of podcasts, the iTunes on this computer I am writing this on have about 20 podcast subscriptions, and my other computer has about the same. One of the more annoying things that happen is when there are multiple people on the episode they talk over each other. With this 5 way Skype video chat up to 5 pod-casters could doing the podcast together and they would be able to see who is talking, pick up on body language and expression and know when someone is going to talk.
I would like to start creating a podcast so I am really excited for this to be rolled out, I might even consider paying for it if I used it enough.

Mark your calenders

2010-05-05T15:23:00.003-04:00

Lost fans are in for a treat. The series finale is being extended to 2 1/2 hours (if only they were commercial free!). This is definitely essential for how many questions still are left unanswered, and how many characters haven't been killed off yet ::cough KATE cough:: "The End" will air from 9-11:30 with a special Jimmy Kimmel show "aloha to lost" right after. I am glad that they are doing this because Jimmy Kimmel has been a big fan of the show since the very beginning. There will probably be a nice wrap up right before the show too to get you in the mood. For any other show the amount of clip shows they've produced would be ridiculous, but they are entirely necessary for Lost.

Also Saturday night (may 22) they will air the series pilot "enhanced". I really don't like the enhanced episodes of lost they offer on hulu. They seem like they are made for very stupid people, so hopefully this will be something different. I am interested and will probably watch it. It would definitely be good to see the characters from the very beginning one more time.

It is really good to see a network treat a show so well. ABC is definitely smart about things like that. They would be foolish not to market this show well since it has such a huge fanbase, but other networks definitely have screwed over great shows.

I Can't Do It, I Dinna Have The Power (To Autotune)

2010-05-05T15:04:00.003-04:00

A lot of Glee fans have been complaining about the back 9 (episodes airing after the incredibly long hiatus) and most of their complaints have been about things the show has always done. Short stories that wrap up by the episode end with a performance finale, pushing characters in the background to showcase others, a lot of whining that makes me wonder if the hiatus made Glee fans somehow expect more from a show than what it was doing currently, just because it was off the air for a long time. It's only in its first season, and it wasn't until today that I realized what was bothering me so much about these issues.

You just don't have the time in 9 episodes to do a huge story arc. There was so much focus on completing a whole story in 13 episodes that it was a singular piece that didn't need any episodes afterwards and could have easily been the whole season ended right there, moving on to the next one. But the hype machine rolls on, and 13 isn't enough.

Let's get serious, no one put this much effort into Hammer since Hammer did it himself.

So what can't you do in 9 episodes that you CAN do with four more episodes like the front 13? For starters, give attention to most of the characters most of the time and their respective plotlines. You have more wiggle room to set the stage and to hype up conclusions you can see coming a mile away that you still bounce in your seat eager to see. Right now things are being created and ended in one or two episodes max, and with 5 episodes left, tell me, what can you do?

Sit back, enjoy the quick fun episodes while they last. If you want the mystical magical "Glee I used to know" then shut the hell up and go back to the dimension you came from where it's a bad show.

I once heard someone say the show jumped the shark. IT'S NOT EVEN IN SEASON 2 YET, GOOD LORD. NERDS. ARG.

Film Review: Mother (2010)

2010-05-05T14:59:00.000-04:00

When a person gives you a gift that you didn't know you needed, it's exhilarating. Similarly, when a filmmaker gives you a film that defies all your expectations and takes you to a place that is truly unique, you cannot help but be excited. Bong Joon-ho's new film Mother is just such a film. It follows a widowed mother as she attempts to prove her son's innocence in the murder of a young girl, but this description doesn't do this funny, tense, marvelous film justice. In the hands of a less interesting and less talented filmmaker, this set up might result in a mediocre, cliche-ridden thriller. But Bong Joon-ho is not a conventional filmmaker. He has given us Memories of Murder and 2007's terrific monster movie The Host, and now he has given us Mother.

As the film opens, we see the unnamed mother cutting herbs and watching her son through the doorway of her apothecary. She sells herbal remedies and does unlicensed acupuncture on the side to make ends meet and take care of her forgetful, naïve, and rather simple 27 year-old son Do-joon (Won Bin). He is outside talking with his friend Jin-tae (Jin Ku). She doesn't like him. We will learn more later on. A look of intense focus is on her face as she watches them and inattentively chops her herbs. So focused is she on her son's activities that she cuts herself, just before a car almost hits him. Later, Do-joon drunkenly follows a young girl through a few alleyways and the next morning she is found dead. Do-joon is swiftly arrested after a bit of evidence places him at the scene, but his mother knows he must be innocent. He can't remember what happened to speak in his own defense, so she must prove that someone else committed the murder and framed him. As in the best thrillers, when she starts uncovering the answers, they do little but raise more questions. Never could I predict where this film was going, and each new revelation only made me want more.

As exciting as the filmmaking and storytelling is in this film, it all hinges on the character of the mother, and how believable the performance is. What an asset Kim Hye-ja must be for a filmmaker to rely on. As the mother, she gives a ferocious performance full of intense emotion and deep subtlety. There is never a false moment. Bong Joon-ho lovingly frames her expressive face as she goes between rage, regret, love, fear, despair, and hope with the greatest of ease, and Bong Joon-ho's camera captures every nuance as she moves through the community, unearthing every scrap that could help her in her quest to free her son. She is a force of nature.

Films like this – with their twisty, unpredictable narratives and supremely accomplished craftsmanship – can remind you just how boring so many movies that populate the box office really are. There is no way a movie like this could be produced in Hollywood. It's too hard to package. As Bong Joon-ho's previous films, Mother melds several genres and toys with different elements in each of them. It begins with a lovely and wonderfully surreal shot of Kim Hye-ja dancing in a field, a sad expression on her face. The film that follows this opening shot weaves comedy and suspense masterfully through a beguiling and wildly inventive tale about family and guilt. This weaving does cause the film to meander slightly, but I was never bored and never did my mind wander. It earns every moment, all the way through the marvelous ending. It's an unmissable film from one today's most intriguing filmmakers, already one of the best of the year. With films like Mother already released this year, it is beginning to look like 2010 will be a very exciting year in film.

Film Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

2010-05-05T14:53:00.003-04:00

If you are a horror filmmaker, the ultimate opportunity must be to be able craft dreamscapes in which anything can happen and you are limited only by what you can imagine. Think of the possibilities for terrifying and surreal imagery that an imaginative and ambitious horror filmmaker would have open to them in a story like A Nightmare on Elm Street. It's such a shame that, rather than taking advantage of this amazing opportunity, Samuel Bayer and Platinum Dunes productions decided to instead just return to the same boiler room over and over again for this lifeless and dull remake.

The problem with so many modern horror films is that they don't do what they are supposed to do. They don't give the audience suspense or scares. They aren't frightening or unsettling. They aren't even shocking. They are just time-fillers. One of the chief culprits in this trend of bland horror is Michael Bay's production company Platinum Dunes – the studio to blame for the remakes of Friday the 13^th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Hitcher. They have now brought us A Nightmare on Elm Street, a remake of the Wes Craven semi-classic starring the iconic boogeyman Freddy Krueger. It brings back the boogeyman, but none of the scares, originality, or sense of fun has been translated in this slick remake.

The story is simple enough. Nancy (Rooney Mara), Quentin (Kyle Gallner), Kris (Katie Cassidy), and Jesse (Thomas Dekker) begin sharing the same nightmare in which a man in a hat and striped sweater terrorizes them with a glove fixed with razors. They soon realize when this man named Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley, a talented actor dreadfully wasted here) kills them in their dreams, they die in real life. The conflict, then, is to fight the need to sleep, and if they do fall asleep, avoid being killed by Krueger as he takes over their dreams.

This would be a terrific story in which an imaginative filmmaker could create memorable imagery in surreal dream sequences with which to terrify the audience. But this movie is far too lazy to do that, instead giving us jump scare after jump scare with no genuine thrills at any point in the film. This film commits the greatest sin a horror film can commit: it's not scary or fun. In fact, it's boring.

Horror films can provide fantastic and disturbing imagery, explore the darker side of humanity, or simply be a lot of fun. However, many modern horror films do none of these, particularly the most widely seen films. Films with slow-burning suspense and creepiness that make you double check the locks on your doors like The House of the Devil go unseen while films like this win the weekend box office. It hurts horror as a genre, and Platinum Dunes is one of the worst offenders with their consistently lifeless and stale remakes. They depend on the name recognition and hit all the same beats as the original films – there is not one interesting shot in this film that was not cribbed from the original – without justifying their own existence. To be so beholden to the plots and set pieces of the original films arbitrarily limits the ability of the filmmaker to do something compelling and creative, and leads to lazy exercises like this. They have a terrific boogeyman in Haley's Freddy Krueger, and they had the chance to give the audience truly scary images in the limitless possibilities of the dream world, but they waste it all on some jump scares, and twenty-odd jump scares and a bit of blood and gore do not a horror move make.

Youtube.com is down?

2010-05-04T23:35:00.002-04:00

I guess Youtube.com is down i keep getting a

502 Server Error

Strange

Can You Index the Future?

2010-05-04T15:12:00.002-04:00

Have you ever been freaked out by those auto completes when doing a Google Search? You start typing and Woah! Google knows what I am looking for… freaky! Ok no its not really that freaky and no they don’t “really” know what you are thinking about looking for, they just know what other people have searched for that looks a little bit like what you are typing. Google cannot tell the future, until now!.. well kinda

Google recently invested in a company called Recorded Future, who attempt to use massive amounts of data to tell the future. This type of prediction technology is handy to people that want to know what the various complex markets are going to do in the future, so that investors and business types can make lots of money, well they can make lots of money if they are correct. The theory is that by analyzing massive amounts of data that is currently available a picture of where things are going will emerge. It is suspected that the predictions will be about as accurate as say a weather report, what I would be interested to know is, is it as accurate as a weather prediction for Boston, or a prediction for Phoenix Arizona.

Win...d Power!

2010-05-03T16:03:00.002-04:00

The Daemon would be proud (I suggest you go read Daemon by Suarez). Google again showing their ability to want to do good in the long run has invested $38 million in to Wind Farms built by NextEra. You can read the summary here

I love this idea, I am all for any type of energy production that take emphasis off of coal and gasoline power. While I hope that humans will eventually get to a place where we drastically cut down on the amount of harm we cause by our existence, because honestly I don’t see things slowing down, the only thing we can hope for would be to create new sources of power that keep up with our demands for power but are less harmful than what we have now. Wind Farms may not be the most efficient method, and a lot of people don’t like the way they look, but it is a step in the right direction, and to have this change coming from a massive corporation is well … a breath of fresh air. I am sure there are some good bottom line enhancing, financial reasons for Google’s decision here, but at least they are investing in something semi-long term, which show that they are concerned with the big picture rather than just the here and now.

The conversation about power is a tough one, people are happy to admit that they don’t want to use coal and gasoline as power supplies, but they are either unwilling to make the changes to a less harmful method of power because it will also have drawbacks. At least for the short term everything will have draw backs, wind power kills lots of birds, and people are scared to death of nuclear power. Before we get to a place where a non harmful source of power we need to take the baby steps towards things like Wind Power, and you know what, screw birds.

Does Mega Man Care About the Princess?

2010-05-03T15:17:00.003-04:00

I should have posted this last week when this was fresh and hip, but I didn’t so its here now

Mario Crossover Epicness

I only played up to the second stage, but being able to blow up Mario’s enemies with a machine gun is ultra epic.

I'm on to you, Hawking...

2010-05-03T13:50:00.004-04:00

I think Stephen Hawking just got a Netflix account

After seeing Independence Day he decided that humans contacting aliens probably wouldn't be the best idea!

Now after catching up on Dr. Who he gets to work on figuring out how to build a time machine and just where/when he'd like to go and what he'd like to see.

"If I had a time machine I'd visit Marilyn Monroe in her prime or drop in on Galileo as he turned his telescope to the heavens. Perhaps I'd even travel to the end of the universe to find out how our whole cosmic story ends. "

It will be interesting to see what he thinks when he's caught up on Lost.

I don't know what he'll be watching next, but I know I'll be watching his new documentary on the Discovery channel.

This Week On Netflix Instant Watch (4/23-4/30)

2010-04-30T15:11:00.002-04:00

Gonna divide this into three sections: Good or at best "normal" movies, terrible movies you and your friends can drunkenly riff on, and TV show series.

NOTE: I haven't watched most of what I'm listing, these are more notable things that are on IW and were added in the past week.

Normal Movies
Stagecoach - A classic western.

Fargo - Do I need to explain this? If you haven't seen it, see it.

It Might Get Loud - A documentary about three musicians. I hear most of it is really good. It was in theaters last year.

Bad Movies
The Gay Bed & Breakfast Of Terror - I had the pleasure of watching this with some friends and it is awful. One of the worst movies I've seen. It covers just about every gay stereotype and every conservative Christian stereotype (right down to having pictures of GW Bush and his cabinet next to Jesus), makes no sense in parts, and in the end, the only two people left alive, who are gay, become straight and continue to kill gays. It's pretty over the top, and the actors look like they never kissed anyone of the same gender before filming. I'm sure it was made in jest, and if it wasn't, then I wonder what audience this was made for. Not humans, at any rate.

The Glimmer Man - Do you like Damon Wayans? Do you like Steven Segal? No? Well too bad. This is a hilariously bad action movie, with Segal still trying to pull the Bhuddist pacifist act but not enough to kill thugs with razorblades hidden in credit cards. Damon Wayans is the forced partner, who has a love for Casablanca and... oh who am I kidding, you've seen this cookie-cutter plot a million times. It's pretty funny though.

TV Shows
Party Down: Season 2 - Party Down is a great show that's unfortunately on its way to being canceled. They've been putting up the new episodes on Netflix soon after they air on TV. So while there's only one episode here, there's more to come. In the meantime, watch Party Down season 1, which is also on instant watch.

NBC Thursday Night 4/29: Is Marchtember Oneteenth good for you?

2010-04-30T09:53:00.006-04:00

Community S1E22 "The Art of Discourse": As to be expected, Community was pretty great last night. Pierce makes an ass of himself and Shirley makes a stand, either she leaves or Pierce does, to which Pierce walks out. But not before Abed smashes Pierce's guitar and whips out a bucket list of fraternity movie tropes he wants to complete before graduating. Jeff and Britta wind up dealing with some high school students going to Greendale for college credit, who want to know how to live their life so they don't end up in their 30s back at community college. This escalates into a shouting match which is embarrassing for humanity, ending in a food fight.

Is there really a winner here?

There has been some dissension in the ranks about this episode, but mainly with the Duh-Off towards the end. Which to me was so absurd and silly you couldn't help but laugh at. Abed straight up says "Man, this show is sloppy." and I lost it. As a big fan of Animal House, Abed and Troy acted out some of my favorite bits, although I'm not sure what movie a robot named Boobtron 4000 is referencing. There is a recurring theme showing that all the characters, regardless of age, are pretty childish. But if you've been following this show, you don't need an episode devoted to it to know that. The writing and acting was so good that when the high school kids taunted Jeff and Britta, you wanted to punch them in the face, and really while some episodes don't feature some characters over others, this gave everyone an equal share. This is, of course, ignoring Senor Chang, who stopped by to steal cookies from Girl Scouts.

It's really hard to sum up Community in a short block of text, but as I will say till the end of time, if you're not watching this, you're missing out. Next week's episode, titled "Modern Warfare", looks like it will be the best one of the season.

Oh, and you get to see how stupid "pwn" sounds when said outside the internet. As if it wasn't already.

Hulu: Community S1E22: The Art of Discourse

Parks and Recreation S2E21 "94 Meetings": If you gave P&R a shot in the first season and didn't like it, I beg you to watch the second. It's vaulted into one of the best newer comedies out there, and keeps getting better. This week, Ron finds out he has to attend 94 meetings because his secretary, April, booked them all for March 31st, since she assumed March has only 30 days in it. So Ron splits up the meetings among the staff (and the non-staff, as Ann and Andy are there) to get them done with. Leslie tries to stop a Pawnee historic house and gazebo from being destroyed, a landmark of Pawnee's first interracial marriage, followed by families of both sides murdering each other. After a mess of disastrous interviews, April finally quits working for Ron, to which Ron seeks her out and gets her to come back to work, teaching her a couple things about how to ensure Ron never has to have a meeting with anyone.

"TOM, SACRIFICE YOUR TINY BODY"

Every character on this show gets more endearing every week. Chris Pratt is just adorable as Andy and there is not a bad moment when he's onscreen, let alone the callback to the fake FBI agent he played during the Halloween episode. April's family was amazing, moreso when they showed her sister Natalie, who is an exact clone of April in looks and demeanor. It was like looking into a window of the early episodes. Overall this episode was very chaotic and I'll probably have to watch it a few more times to fully catch all the jokes. With the hectic pace that is dealing with 94 postponed meetings in a single work day, the humor was rapid fire and didn't take time to breathe at all. I feel I'm not fully qualified to try and contain this one.

Also, Councilman Hauser... isawyourpenis.

Hulu: Parks & Recreation S2E21: 94 Meetings

The Office S6E26 "Body Language": I'm not a huge fan of The Office so I don't want to get into too much detail. I might be missing a few callbacks or references or even things like not laughing when someone does something that's so "them." That being said, this episode wasn't very good. It was about a deal with a laser printer manufacturer and their rep is a very attractive woman, to which Michael Scott is confused if she's removing more of her clothes during the meeting because she's interested in Michael, or if she's flirting to get a better deal from Sabre. In the meantime, Dwight is trying to get Kelly to sign up for a minority executive training program so Darryl doesn't get it.

Shut it, paleface.

They spent way too much time on Michael staring awkwardly at everyone else. Really, the whole printer deal plot was poorly thrown together and built on a pile of being uncomfortable, but failed to do so. They drilled in the fact that the rep was hot a bunch of times and there was a lot of gaps without dialogue that didn't achieve anything in the acting/emotion to make up for that. The second plot with Dwight, however, was fairly funny and had a few good moments. It didn't save the episode or stand out compared to say, last week's episode, but I guess if you're a fan of the show it's better than another clip show.

Hulu: The Office S6E26: Body Language

30 Rock S4E19 "Argus": I don't care what the naysayers tell me, but 30 Rock this season has been great. This week, there is a quarrel as Grizz is getting married, but both Tracy and Dotcom want to be the best man, to which Liz has to play the problem solver yet again. Jenna has a new boyfriend (Will Forte) who Liz feel uncomfortable being around, and after thorough investigation, finds out he is a drag queen who dresses up as Jenna. Which for Jenna, is the perfect thing since she can finally truly be in love with herself in a way she wasn't before. Jack gets a peacock named Argus from Don Geiss' last will and testament, and is feeling a bit lost without Geiss being around anymore. In the end, Liz winds up having to be the best woman to three weddings in order to shut everyone up, and Jack assumes Argus has the soul of Geiss, and gets several problems off his chest as he slips the peacock a glass of whiskey.

HOW DID HE GET UP THERE SO FAST

This was a really happy, sweet episode. Apart from Liz, everyone got what they wanted in the end. I wish I had a gif of Jack experiencing the 5 stages of grief in a matter of seconds. It didn't have a lot of content in terms of plot, and was more of a character exercise. I know this isn't a lot of text devoted to this episode, but it's one that leaves you laughing, but you still smile and go "awwwwww" afterwards. As much as one normally does when seeing someone do a duet then make out with themselves, anyways.

Hulu: 30 Rock S4E19: Argus

It's Me, The Stupidest Android App

2010-04-29T12:10:00.004-04:00

I was browsing the Goondroid Wiki for various apps for my HTC Hero when I noticed GentleAlarm. It's pretty clever in that the free version doesn't work on Wednesdays, so you buy the paid one.

Let me take a second to tell you about my alarm setup. I have one set at 7AM, and one set at 7:30. One goes off, I judge how tired I'm feeling, I choose to go back to bed and wait for the second alarm. Given I've had sleep issues, the description of this app intrigued me, especially this "sleep cycle" function.

Hey there gentle dream traveler, let me waste your time. (image courtesy Androlib)

So you start the app and it throws a wall of text at you talking about sleep cycles. I say whatever and set an alarm for 7:30. It sets a pre-alarm for 7. Hang on a minute. Isn't that what I have been doing for the last month? Using the alarms that come with my phone? But I digress, maybe it's got a funny sound or makes beeps in the night to help me sleep or something.

7AM! Buzzing from flashy thing on top of large box. Ung look at flashy thing. Ung see lots of symbols and wall of text. Ung just touch flashy screen until sound go away.

It spouts a bunch of text at you when the pre-alarm goes off. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but when you immediately wake up from an alarm, is the first thing you do read a bunch of words, let alone words telling you what a pre-alarm is? It was like I was holding a lost piece of alien technology. I snoozed the alarm, woke up half an hour later, and uninstalled it.

I really don't think there's a substitute for what I have as my current alarm.

Scared Yet?

2010-04-29T12:02:00.003-04:00

If you read the posts that i write you probably have noticed that i am not a big fan of Facebook. I think they are kinda evil. The link below is a time line of the various privacy changes that Facebook has made over time to the Terms of Service.

Adjust Your Tinfoil Hat

Damn!

First?! More Like My Fist in Your Face!

2010-04-28T16:52:00.000-04:00

You know what pisses me off in all its incarnations? People that post “First” in the comment sections on the internet. This needs to stop, and as soon as possible. If I had a platform where people actually listened to the thing is say I would scream this from the top of that platform as loud as possible (whoa extended metaphor Batman!)
Posting “First” is just about the more useless thing ever, I mean I sort of understood when it was a big thing over on I can haz Cheezburgr but it extends beyond that, I have seen it on totally random web pages on the internet. I have the ability to figure out what the first posting on a web page is, its pretty clear, you don’t have to waste my time and yours by posting “first” in that comment. I mean if you are really really feel the need to do this, maybe work it into an interesting post. For instance you could start your post with something like “First off I would like to say I am a total and complete fan boy” that way you are getting the inane satisfaction of putting “first” into the first post but you are contributing something to the discussion. I personally think that this should be a banning offence everywhere on the internet. In fact I think someone needs to write a Firefox add on that filters out all these “First” posts.

Fine, I Guess I Will Write About the iPhone Fiasco

2010-04-28T15:39:00.004-04:00

Originally I wasn’t going to touch this topic with a 100 foot pole, but I guess I will write up my views on it anyway. Of course I am referring to the fiasco over the iPhone 4 and Gizmodo. Now let me start out by saying that I do like Gizmodo, I think their coverage of tech is pretty decent, they have a wide variety of writers that cover a gamut of topics, and hell you can’t go wrong with the Hobomodo for getting free shit (like the Google sticker that is now on my laptop, I am a certified fan boy), I think that CNET does a better job of being objective, but Gizmodo is a great place for keeping up on what’s going on with tech.

Ok, so a dude, I am going to take a page from Leo Laporte and not use his name that works at Apple was out for his birthday in a German beer bar, getting sloshed, and he happened to have what looked like an iPhone 3g. Like many a drunken person he left his phone at the bar. I can’t really fault him for that, I used to leave my phone at parties in college (it’s fun to try to figure out where it ended up), I have left my wallet in a cab while drunk, one year I thought it would be a fun idea to balance my phone on the rim of a pint glass, guess what happened next? It fell into the pint glass, which was full of beer. The next morning the phone was dead. We all make mistakes, however in this case his 3g was actually a disguised iPhone 4, so he left a prototype phone, a phone that was not his at the bar. On top of that the phone belonged to Apple who is security nut jobs of a company, nothing they don’t want the public to know is let out of the bag till Steve is good and ready, they play the media machine like a harp, but like every tightly held secret the harder you hold on to it, the more likely it is that something will slip out, and that is exactly what happened. This dude left the phone at the bar, someone that was sitting nearby grabbed it, they say they attempted to give it back, and when that was not achievable he held on to it.

This dude basically figured out that the phone was not in fact a 3g and shopped around for someone that would want to purchase it off of him, he tried Wired, they took a pic and left it at that, he tried Gizmodo and they wrote him a check for $5000 for the phone. Gizmodo then dismantled the phone and posted all the details to their web page this past weekend. I heard that in 1 hour Gizmodo received something like 1 million unique visitors. That is a massive amount of traffic for 1 hour for any web page.

Apple contacted Gizmodo about getting the phone back, and Gizmodo, told them the only way they would get the phone back was to officially request it, this basically would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the phone was real, which they did and Giz sent them the phone back.
In the after math of this the police raided and confiscated a number of computers and electronics from the Gizmodo editors, who did the article on the iPhone4, house as evidence. The local police are treating the incident as a theft and are investigating.

I find a couple of things interesting with this situation; firstly, should the Apple employee be fired?
Personally I don’t think he should be, he made a mistake that is very common, and I think that Apple should realize this and have a bit of a sense of humor about the whole thing.

Next, does this do damage to Apple?
It could be argued that it does, the cat is out of the bag, we have some idea about the iPhone 4 now, and it takes some of the “wow” out of the announcement. This might hold a bit of water, but I think from a practical stand point it really does not hurt Apple at all, anyone that follows tech news knew that there was going to be an announcement this summer and that the announcement was almost guaranteed to be about the iPhone 4. I heard an argument that this might hurt Apples 3g sales since people will not wait till the 4 is official, but we all knew this anyway so I don’t think this leak changed the minds of anyone looking to purchase an iPhone. Either you were cool with getting the 3g now or you were going to wait anyway.

Should Giz, and other blogs, be considered journalists and should they be entitled to the protections associated with that title?
I think that Ryan is going to take a stab at this topic since he is a journalist where as I am just a blogger. I did want to touch on one part of this, and it specifically pertains to the discussion of this on TWIT this past Sunday. One of the panelists said that this would never have happened at one of the big news organization. I totally agree, but I also think that that is part of the problem with the big news organizations. Granted Giz is not small, but you have to start somewhere, why does being owned by a massive corporation make things more legit than being small. I have some strong opinions about the press in general, but I will try not to get all heated here (that’s for a different post), but I do think that new entities that are owned by large corporation kinda hurts the message of that news entity, because now the news is all wrapped up in corporate politics. Giz is like a teenager, young, fresh, rebellious, bucking society’s pressures, playing in an industry of senile giants, that in a lot of ways are too big and ponderous to get out of their own way, and when the young kid shows up they basically yell “get off my lawn”

I would like to consider myself an upstanding person, however if I was the person that found the phone I might have done the same thing. Had I done the right thing and returned it to Apple I imagine my world would have become a nightmare of non-disclosure agreements, and other scary legal documents, which may be the fate anyway of the dude that sold the phone the Giz. I hope he kept the $5000 around for lawyer fees.

Finally, who is to say that this is the final prototype, yes Apple confirmed that it is a prototype, but for all we know it was a prototype for a particular purpose. The kid that was testing I believe worked for the part of Apple that designed the cell phones radio. It could have been a prototype for that any only that, I find it hard to believe that Apple who basically required the construction of a bunker in order to give developers access to an iPad would be letting the fully developed iPhone 4 walk out the door, but who knows stranger things have happened.

Achewood

2010-04-27T16:47:00.006-04:00

Webcomics are a topic near and dear to my heart. The very first two webcomics I read were, like for a lot of people, PvP and Penny-arcade. These two comics are still around, their art has improved, their fan bases have grown and they basically defined the genre. One of the comics that I really love that I got into a little bit later was Achewood. Sadly it doesn't seem to possess that knack for staying power that these others have.

Achewood was always weird, I mean how do you describe to someone that you are laughing at a comic strip about some stuffed animals and a cat who wears a speedo and ray bans all the time? It was love or hate for a lot of people. It had a sort of avante garde, whimsical humor to it. It would create these ridiculous and often terrifying characters and places. It created a world where if you made a deal with the devil you could become a millionaire, first by your skills on the piano but later through your knack at making products that could only be sold in skymall. Where C.S. Lewis opened a door to the magical world of Narnia, Onstad opened a door to the secret menu at taco bell and an ebay only for the idiotically rich.

It was truly a magical time. But much like in the magical land of Narnia, all good things must end.

Where once was the childlike innocence of Phillip, there is only a dark cynicism of Roast Beef. Roast beef at first was originally depressing in a funny way, but it eventually gave way to being so depressing you start to worry about the guy making the comic. Wondering if each time he failed to update for a week or longer, he'd finally given up.

Yes there is still that knack for creating fantastical situations, for instance I am amused by the character Steve Denueve in the recent arc. I hold hope for Achewood returning to it's former glory in the same way I still secretly hope that Weezer will produce another decent album.

In that I really don't expect it to happen, but if it did it'd make me very, very happy.

CBS Could Use A Little Work In The Scheduling Department

2010-04-27T15:46:00.003-04:00

How I Met Your Mother, at least to me, is the only reason to watch CBS apart from sports. It's consistently funny, has a ton of original humor and jokes, and also has four new episodes left for the end of the season.

Since January, showing new episodes has been sparse. While I understand the Olympics put a crimp in everyone's TV schedules, this year CBS has only shown 9 new episodes of the current season. When you factor in that there's been 17 weeks since the new year, something doesn't seem right.

This is how CBS makes decisions.

They've been hammering in reruns like nobody's business, which for a lot of fans of the show, is making every new episode feel lackluster or not as good as it could be. As someone who watched the whole series in one huge chunk, it flows together from episode to episode nicely, so having a constant break every other week in the schedule interferes with that.

There's also been concerns that not too many episodes focused on the overarching plot. Robin's relationship with Don is barely touched upon, and only 2 episodes this year have been about Ted's future. The whole season's been great, but just because you keep getting picked up for new seasons doesn't mean you have to drag it out.

I guess in the end, I'm not going to complain if CBS wants to show Slapsgiving 2 again like they did last night. But at the same time, I have DVDs I can watch if I want to do that, and I don't want to be left hanging. Maybe I should watch House when I know this is going to happen.

Thankfully, starting next week, CBS will air the remaining 4 episodes of the season for the month of May.

Community S1 E21: Contemporary American Poultry

2010-04-26T20:05:00.001-04:00

Community is the best new show this season, and several years down the road I can see this show being talked about in the same vein of Arrested Development, in that it's innovative and balances its style of humor with a heavy splash of physical comedy. Oh, and nerds love it.

Thursday night's episode, "Contemporary American Poultry", starts off innocently enough with the study group with less concern on studying, and everything to get to the cafeteria in time for the best chicken fingers ever. This is also more important than Brita's dying cat. This is a great bit of work to do in a take as everyone but Brita and Shirley dart off like madmen:

"If it was cool to eat God, He'd be a chicken finger."

But getting in line it turns out the chicken fingers run out too quickly, and the fry cook, Star-Burns, is hoarding some for his friends. It's nice to see Star-Burns get a bit more screentime as he's sort of the show's only recurring villain, at least until Anthony Michael Hall comes back for more blood. Suddenly, Jeff gets a plan, and this is where coal starts getting shoved post-haste into the pop-culture train. Freeze-frame, and Abed narration.

"As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be in a mafia movie."

From here's it's literally a direct Goodfellas parody. They get Star-Burns fired for hoarding chicken, and Abed gets the job. Abed makes a deal with Senor Chang, which the group doesn't like, but changes their minds quickly when the find out it was for a 10% bonus to everyone's tests. Everyone abandons Jeff and starts following Abed as the leader. The chicken operation starts to get serious now. Everything leading up to this point is masterfully orchestrated and shot so well that if it wasn't a socially awkward study group trying to create an empire based on chicken fingers, you might wonder what movie you were watching.

Everyone has a role in the chicken mafia. Abed makes the chicken, Troy smuggles it to Brita and Shirley for separation into individual boxes for their clients, then passes off to Annie. With this amount of power the group benefits insanely well. Pierce gets an entourage, Brita gets a hairdresser, Annie gets an expensive backpack, and Troy gets a pet monkey, named Annie's Boobs. But over time, Abed finds his team is starting to get unruly in that all their new amenities aren't good enough. In order to teach them a lesson, Abed takes away all their newfound toys, angering the group into seeking out Jeff and ending Abed's deep-fried reign of terror.

"He's gone from lovable Johnny 5 to evil HAL."

With the help of Star-Burns, Jeff gains a key to dismantle the fryer for good. He breaks into the kitchen at night, to see Abed frying up tater tots, and looking to find new ways to start the cycle of the mafia anew, since everyone is sick of chicken. While one-on-ones and inadvertent group hugs are the sort of thing that ends every episode, it's almost like Abed is trolling the characters by being able to easily drop whatever he's doing for something else. Jeff just wants to end it, Abed agrees, but only being allowed one movie reference at a time, Abed chooses to eat a final meal of chicken fingers in the style of 16 Candles.

This is the only episode so far that retained it's theme for almost the whole time. While the other episodes made movie or TV show references to tie the whole thing together at random intervals (usually the very beginning and the very end before the credits), this stayed the course of keeping all things mafia-related. When they are explaining how they smuggle chicken out of the cafeteria, it's mirroring a scene in Casino. When the group discovers their possessions are being destroyed, Layla plays loudly in the background to mirror Goodfellas. This episode knew what it set out for and rode the Absurdity Express to the bitter end, finishing it by going back to how life used to be, also known as Abed's standby of John Hughes.

The attention to detail is another element most people overlook. The board in the background with everyone's wants and needs is filled out for everyone and is hilarious if you pause and read it all. The main plot was set up perfectly, and nothing has changed with every element of the show, right down to the surroundings, being important and funny in their own way. Even the credit sequence was icing on the cake.

Troy attempts to make Abed look like the better fry cook candidate.

If you're a Goodfellas fan, this is probably going to be one of, if not your favorite episode this season. It's my #2, as nothing's topped Physical Education so far (like anything can top a naked Joel McHale). But each new episode amazes me with a different take on an old idea or sitcom cliche, and strives to fill a niche sense of humor possessed by us children of the 80s who spent the last 20 years filling their brain with TV and movies. If you're not watching it, you're missing out, plain and simple.

Link: Hulu: Community S1E21

Hulu is down?!

2010-04-26T13:00:00.006-04:00

Ok so i am working from home today. One of the nice things about working from home is that when i eat lunch i can watch Hulu. I was looking forward to a little SG-1 and pasta and i got an error on every episode i tried to watch. The error is pictured below

I took a look in the Hulu forums and there are apparently a bunch of people all experiencing this issue. I could not find any mention of it anywhere else right now.

Edit: It is now working for me again. I wonder what happened?

Edit: I took another look at the forums and Hulu as responded and is fixing the issue

She's a brick... computer

2010-04-23T12:34:00.002-04:00

There is nothing better than paying to have your technology get bricked. If you don’t know what “bricking” is it basically means that the tech is so messed up that without some serious intervention on the users part is now a sweet looking paper weight. Apple updates used to brick iPhones, Sony updates have bricked PS3s the list goes on. Now usually the number of bricks is small, obviously if all the devices got bricked it would be a massive massive issue for these companies, companies who you pay to use their services, services that require that you have the most up to date software, or at least pester you till you update. This is even more annoying when the bricking is the result of a Virus scanner.

McAfee released an update this week that targeted and deleted the “svchost.exe” file that, well, basically lets windows XP run. This issue did not affect vista or win7 computers but it did affect windows XP which is he Os with the highest number of users total, but also the OS that is used in most corporations. Mine for instance. Once the svchost is deleted the computer will no longer boot up and requires the user to manually, from the command prompt, copy the file off the recovery cd and back into its home.

Now for a single consumer, especially one that is not super tech savvy, this is a tough thing to do, but its even worse when a whole companies computers are taken out.

There are more than a few things wrong with this situation. For starters who the hell did McAfee not test the update on any XP machine. McAfee provides the anti-virus software for corporation that pay them a lot of money to protect those corporations computers system, most of those corporations are XP shops so how did it not cross at least someone at McAfee’s mind to maybe test the release on XP! If this type of thing happened to say AVG who gives away their software for free to consumers (don’t think they do for businesses) it would still be unacceptable, but at least you did not have to pay for it. I think what irks me the most about this, is that anti-virus is required, at least on a Windows machine (don’t even bother trying to bring up the Mac here, if Apple was the number 1 OS for corporations we would be seeing this problem with them as well) especially if the users of said machines might click on links in emails or any of the other ways to infect your computer these days. Running without anti-virus in a corporation is a great way to make every IT Managers worst nightmare come true.

McAfee says they have fixed this issue and pushed out an updated that does not target the svchost file, but it might be too little too late. We will have to see how this all shakes out but I would bet that some heads will roll over at McAfee, and I would bet a lot of the affected corporations will be switching over to one of McAfee competitors.

The New Who

2010-04-23T09:16:00.009-04:00

I’ve finally got a chance to watch the first episode of the new season of Doctor Who. I was sad to see David Tennant go, like everyone, but there was one thing that I was happy to see gone. ALL HIS BAGGAGE. The very mechanism of the doctor rejuvenating into a new being is such a great way to run a show like this. Once things get too dark and heavy from all the epic things that have built up, just hit the refresh button and get a shiny new doctor who only kind of remembers all that. This show is supposed to be upbeat and full of whimsy, and eventually Tennant was getting too depressing. Not the actor of course, just the way they were writing him. How many seasons did he spend bent out of shape over Rose?

Matt Smith himself, is believable as an alien. When he said “I am not people”, you don’t find it that hard to believe him. His eyebrows vaguely remind me of Odo from Deep Space 9, who once joked how hard forming the human nose was. While the Time Lords do appear human, it is never really said if that is only the way they present themselves to humans. It is somewhat charming to think that this young doctor, in making his human form kind of goofed on the eyebrows, and made himself look a little alien. He still manages to be cute though!

Without giving away too much, there was one new element to the show that I found interesting. A moment of filmmaking to show that he had just finally pieced a problem together, it almost reminded me of those moments in House when he looks off in the distance during a conversation having finally figured the whole medical mystery out. The camera snaked around from point to point, and you felt like you were getting a look into the doctor’s manic thought process.

I approve of the new companion too. Generally as long as they aren’t too useless I am happy, since I am not really the sort of Fan Girl who hate the companions because they are not me. My favorite was Donna Noble, so seeing another red head is good. The preview of the season to come clips had me excited for this new season and for this new Doctor.

Hulu to launch premium pay subscription

2010-04-22T18:38:00.004-04:00

link

I personally love Hulu, but I can accept that they can't just make their money off kiva ads. (I still don't understand why the website started out with mostly just ads for charities, um aren't charities supposed to be using that money on something other than providing me with the latest ep of modern family?)

The fact that they will still provide the latest 5 episodes for free is great. This service will provide whole seasons, for an extra fee ($9.95 a month). Currently I mostly rely on Netflix Instant Watch for watching old episodes of TV shows, for a similar price. So I probably wouldn't opt in for Hulu Plus unless it ended up having a lot more shows than Netflix Instant Watch. As someone who loves watching TV shows in multi-episode sessions in order, this definitely could open up another option.

This would catch a lot of people as customers who are probably pirating TV shows too. As the success of Itunes has shown, if people can download something conveniently, without having to deal with torrents and all that, they will pay for it.*

*This blog does in no way condone pirating, but accepts that it is a thing that occurs in the real world.

Ticket Tunes

2010-04-22T12:13:00.002-04:00

I love to hate on Apple. They just make it so easy, especially now a days. They seem to be eating up a lot of the good will they accumulated during the 90s from being the !(Microsoft) (not Microsoft, sorry to geek out there for a second), I am sure I will be posting some hate for them soon, but in this post I would like to rally my support of the rumor that Apple is going to incorporate ticket sales into iTunes.
I love this idea, mainly because I think that Ticketbastard needs all the competition it can get, the merger with Live Nation had stipulation for creating competition, but come on, there is really only 1 place to buy tickets and that place is Ticketmaster.
I hate TM and here are a 2 reasons why, not in any real order:
They cant handle the demand – they may have made some improvements to this recently, but on several occasions they were not able to keep up with the demand on the consumers and their web page kept crashing. I know some people that got all the way to the end of the ticket purchasing process only to have the page crash and the tickets be released because TM can’t deal with the demand. I find this to be unacceptable, either they needed to stagger the ticket releases so that the demand was spread out over a couple day or they need to make sure their damn infrastructure can handle all the people trying to give them money
The fees! – this might be my biggest problem. TM charges a ticket fee that in most cases is like 20% of the ticket price. You know I understand originally it was a convenience to be able to buy something on the internet, it was fast, and you didn’t have to get off your ass and go anywhere, but we live in a world now where buying things on the internet is not a convenience it’s the way it’s done. Now, I am not saying that TM can’t charge a fee, I mean they need to make money somehow (though I would bet if they really cared they could figure out a way to make money without the fees, but that is not the point). What I take issue with is the fact that it’s a per ticket fee! So if you buy several tickets they whack you for each one. Personally I think a better method would be to charge a fee for the whole transaction or use a micropayment scheme. I am not opposed to paying the fees, but I can’t stomach the idea that TM, which really doesn’t do anything but be a middle man, can charge so much when the service they are providing is well pretty limited. The real issue here is the price point of the fees, of course TM is going to charge as much as possible because well, what are you going to do, and there really isn’t any other competitor, especially not one that is branded so well. If you want tickets you are going to first check TM. The solution to this issue is a major competitor with branding and the infrastructure to take TM on, and I think Apple fits that bill perfectly.

Everyone know who Apple is, I would hazard to guess that most people between the ages of 15 and 30 have iTunes on their computer right now. Apple as least for me single handedly stopped me from really using pirating web pages like ISO Hunt and Pirate Bay because iTunes makes the music buying experience easy and painless. Apple already has a relationship with the music industry, and while its not perfect it’s a start. If Apple started to sell concert or sports tickets via iTunes they would instantly become a major competitors to TM and they could change the price point of the fees on tickets. This would hopefully exert pressure on TM to change their fee structure as well. If so everyone wins!
Now I don’t know if Apple would actually change the way fees work, they might just end up charging the same as TM but if they want to take business away from TM and to make themselves a player in the ticketing market they will have to do something to differentiate themselves and I think the fees are the place to do it. As I understand it TM get to sell 80% of the tickets at a particular venue, leaving 20% for the Artist or Record Label to sell. Based on that it should not really matter to the Artist or the Record Label who is selling the tickets as the seller is making their money on the fees per transactions. This means that unlike the sale of the actual music where the Artist and Label (more the Label) are affected by the price point in ticket sales it should not matter, and therefore Apple could really set whatever price point they want. Additionally just about every person that has iTunes already has a credit card stored with Apple, Apple has your address, and all the other information needed to transaction with you, granted TM has most of this info too, if you have bought tickets from them, but I find the ease of use of iTunes to trump the ease of use of TM.
I believe that part of the rumor is that Apple would then have the Ticket sent to your phone and you would show the phone at the turn stile to get into the show. This would cut down on the overhead of having to mail out the tickets, and it would make the tickets cheaper for the consumer who will no longer has to pay for the shipping of a piece of paper. I am sure if this is true then you would also be able to print the ticket in the event your phone can’t handle the transmission method.
I personally think that this is a great idea; however there are a couple draw backs. One is that it would bloat iTunes even further, currently according to my Add or Remove Programs iTunes is 160mb, which is pretty big . It would also give Apple more power than the currently do, and they have a tendency to do some “interesting” things within their eco-system. Just look at the changes to the developer agreement of App developers.
Over all I am in favor of this rumor becoming the truth, if only to create an actual competitor to TM, one with the capability and the branding to give them a run for their money, or in this case fees.

Couple of things:

2010-04-22T10:53:00.000-04:00

1) I think the relaunch is going to happen. I have been able to get a couple more people to agree to contribute to the Blog. If you think you would like to write something (not sure who I am talking to here since no one reads this) feel free to send me along something and it will get posted.
2) I think I am going to aim to start having as frequent as possible contribution starting next week, so next week will be the relaunch. I may still post a few things in the mean time, in the hopes that I can get some momentum up again and get back to trying to post on a daily basis.
3) I have a pipe dream. I really want to create a podcast, and I would love it the podcast was associated with the blog. Ryan and I tried for a while, but usually it was an epic fail in some way or another. I am hoping that if the blog gets a bunch of frequent contributors that a podcast for the blog would become more of a reality. Hell if the hippies from This Week on Lot can do it why cant I?!
4) If we ever got to a point where readership was an actual thing, I would consider buying casualgeekery.com, but for now I am going to stick with the blogger url cause, well, it’s free. I like free, and I am a Google fan boy so might as well stick with Google for a bit

Thinking about a Relaunch (now with paragraph breaks)

2010-04-21T15:39:00.002-04:00

I have been thinking about Casual Geekery for a while now. I miss it. I know that it had basically no readers, and I am sure that no one will read this post, but I enjoyed writing and ranting about techie stuff. Recently one of my favorite pod-casters Scott Johnson launched Frog Pants Studios. He has created new and adopted several existing podcasts to the Frog Pants family, and while he is the main host there are several others, and some podcasts he is not even part on. While thinking about Frog Pants and Casual Geekery I realized that the main problem that Casual Geekery faced was that Ryan and I were the only people writing anything. I know for myself that I really only wanted to write posts about things that I was either excited about or pissed about, and frankly it’s hard to get that riled up every day. We both also have jobs that pay us and therefore those take priority over a blog that is read but no one. The conclusion that I came up with is that Casual Geekery needs more contributors.

I think a total of around 5 people would be pretty ideal. This way when some of the contributors are busy with real life the blog will not be stagnant for a day or several days. I also like this idea because, well, having a variety of tones and subject matter is important to make the blog interesting to the 0 people that read it, but if content is king and the blog was to ever take off or gather readership I think it would be important to have different voices rather than just 1 or 2. To this point I think that having a couple girls as contributors would be great. Geekdom is a pretty much dominated by neck beards (who are male) and since the blog is mostly based on opinion having some female opinions to provide counterpoint to mine and Ryan’s as well as other male nerds out there would be excellent.

I am putting out feelers to see if I can rope some people in who want to write, and maybe if all goes well the blog will be relaunched. Also, to the 0 people that will read this, if you happen to know someone that would be willing to design us a logo that would be sweet.

And lastly for good measure let me just say “Fuck Facebook”

Google Win

2010-01-27T15:00:00.004-05:00

I dont think they should change this

Google my MBTA Please

2010-01-15T14:19:00.001-05:00

I live in Boston. In case you have never lived in Boston or had the pleasure of taking the MBTA let me tell you that it sucks! For years I lived on the Green Line, an ancient trolley like line that runs over near Boston College where I went to school. I thought the Green Line was the worst, it was slow, it stopped every block, I am not kidding like every block especially on the B line, but it was ok cause I was a college student and I did not need to go all that far to get to the drinking holes frequented and it was a fine way to get home once you were in the bag. A couple of years ago I moved to Somerville and I at first thought the Red line was the bees knees, it ran in a straight line, unlink the Green Line the station were underground (except Charles), but now after 3 years I realized that the Red line just sucks a little less than the Green line cause well they all suck. Just do a Google search for the MBTA or put #MBTA into Twitter sometime and watch as everyone and t heir brother rails on the T (should I point out the pun?)
Ok so the T sucks it’s in debt up to its ears, the trains derail, there are always signal problems (what the hell is a switching problem), and right now as I write this there are 13 elevators out of service. The Mass government does not really have a plan to really fix it, at least not anytime soon. So here is what I propose, I think that Google should buy the MBTA. Now the property for the MBTA is owned by the state, so Google would really just pay a license to the state and then they could run the MBTA however they wanted.
When I tell people this idea most of them give me strange looks, because Google is an internet company why would they want to run a transit system especially one that sucks so bad. I realize that there is no chance of this happening but I think it’s a fun idea so I am running with it. Here is the logic, Google makes their money in ads, the more information Google has, the more people they have using their services, and well the more eye balls that are pointed at Google the more money they make. From the beginning Google has basically given away their products for free, and free is attractive, its even more attractive is the free service is good and let’s face it Google is good. They kicked the butts of everyone else in the search sector, their email is definitely better than the rest, Google Docs is pretty sweet, and its free unlink MS’s Office and its lighter weight than Open Office, since it lives on the internet. Your data is back up to Google so even if your computer crashes your entire Google document are still out there (fear of the cloud aside, which is for a different post).
Ok how does this correlate to the MBTA, well a large amount of people take the MBTA every day, they are in fact stuck taking the MBTA everyday cause well they don’t have a car or they don’t want to deal with parking in Boston, and who can blame them. We T commuters are basically a captive audience sitting on the train on your phone, ipods, Kindles, laptops (if you can get a seat) trying not to look at each other while we bide out time till we can get the hell off the train. That is a lot of eye balls that are all in a captive place, Google could totally advertise whatever they wanted on the T and the commuters would see it, and unlink on a webpage where you can just close the window, or run an ad blocker the eye balls will see the ads. Now I realize that we don’t want our lives to looks like a Geocities (RIP) page with pop ups and neon cats everywhere, but well Google is a master of slick design (which is why I love gmail) so these would be presented in stylish manner. Right now if the T decided to plaster all the surfaces with ads people would be mad, but that is because the T sucks, if the service was good, and reliable, I don’t think people would take so much of an issue.
Obviously I am overlooking some of the logical issues, like unions and what not, but let’s look at some of the benefits that I think could come out of this; Google already has paid for free wireless to be put into some airport, they could create wireless on the train, in fact I would even be willing to watch an ad prior to being able to use the wireless, like you would watch an ad on Hulu. I would be game to sit through 30 seconds of just about anything if I was getting something I wanted, like free wireless, at the end. I see there being no reason that a computer system couldn’t run the entire train system. They run the same trains everyday from and through the same places, and it’s all on a track, so its not like there are a ton of variable, which leads me to think that signaling problems and switching issues must be humans error. Having a computer run the trains would eliminate the computer error.
People are afraid of computers running things in case there is a screw up, but the MBTA already derails trains, and is plagued by a myriad of other issues, so it’s not like a computer could really be any worse, and in fact it would probably be better. This computer system obviously not be in everything, for instance the MBTA bus system would still require drivers, but what about having the buses integrated with Google maps so that you could actually tell where the bus was in relation to you, and it would not just be a shot in the dark based off a schedule that is less that totally accurate. You would know if it made sense to keep walking to the next station or if you should just wait.
The MBTA has recently made a lot of their data open to the public, which would allow developers to take the data and design useful software around it, but it would be much better to have that software written by people that are known for writing good software already.
This is a total pie in the sky idea, I don’t really think that Google would even consider this, but I like it as a thought experiment.

No Comments Please

2010-01-14T16:35:00.002-05:00

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Wow another post! This one should be pretty quick and is not really about news. What I want to write about it internet comments. They say the first step is to admit you have a problem; well I have a problem I read internet comments! I find myself 3 pages deep reading the inane ramblings of Apple and Microsoft fan boys flaming each other over some insignificant detail of a Cnet article, or I read the comments left on a YouTube video. As I read the comments my soul starts to tarnish with the overwhelming amount of hate and stupidity that is contained in comments section of almost any web page. For instance I was reading a web comic recently and the first post was to basically call the author gay or something dumb like that (I would go find the example but I think my brain might jump ou out my head and run, and I am lazy), all I can think of when I read it was “WHY!” why did you take the time to write that comment, if you don’t like the comic there is this handy X in the corner of your browser you can click and it will go away.
I have asked multiple people about this (because I am so scientific) and mostly people blame the anonymity of the internet for this behavior that would get you a smack if you did it in real life. I mean imagine a Troll in real life?

A dude that follows someone around and harasses them, you know what would happen? There would be restraining orders, and civil suits, but because there is no face to go with the comments these ass holes think that they can just say whatever they want, no I will take it further, they think they are entitled to say whatever they want.
I can go on and on about this, but I won’t. I made a new year’s resolution to stop reading internet comments. Today is Jan 14 and I have been doing a pretty good job, I occasionally need to remind myself that I am not supposed to be reading the comments. I would dig some kind of zapper that would zap me a little anytime I start to read the comments. I can tell you that just 14 days of comment free internet has made me a happier person. I can also tell you that I don’t buy into the anonymity of the internet, I think that you should be the same online as you are in person, and as the internet becomes more and more important as a means to stay connected to other members of the human race, it becomes even more important that people represent themselves if not accurately then at least not as total shit heads.

Somebody Index Those Huge Balls

2010-01-14T10:27:00.002-05:00

So the blog is basically dead. We have not written anything worth posting in a while, I tend to start posts and then mid way through decide they are dumb, however there is some recent tech news that I wanted to put my 2 cents in before it becomes “olds” (is that the opposite or news?) What I am talking about is the giant balls that Google has in their stance towards China.

In case you missed it on every other tech related nerd blog on the internet Google recently told China that they were no longer going to filter their search results for google.cn (which is China Google). Basically China does not want their people to get to choose what parts of the internet they see, particularly if those parts of the internet are critical of China or discuss aspects of Chinese history that the government finds unsavory.

Google like most international companies had been playing ball with the Chinese government, because well, China is a massive consumer base and companies are willing to over look China's human rights and censorship foibles (tongue in cheek) in order to do business. Google makes up about 30% of the Chinese search market, while Baidu, the search engine run by the Chinese government makes up majority of search.

Basically I want to give kudos to Google for basically giving the Chinese government the good old America finger and without warning removing the filtering from their search. Google is willing to negotiate with the Chinese government to see if they can reach a compromise, but if not Google is also willing to shut down Google.cn and all their other business there, which would cut Google off from a huge amount of consumers and potentially a crap load of money. You are welcome to read Google’s blog post about this, and read all their reasons for doing this, its kinda a hodgepodge of reasons all of the good but I personally don’t think they are the “real” reasons Google has taken up this stance, I honestly think that this goes back to Google’s original manta of “Be Good” and they have some ill feelings towards China.

While I have no idea what China will do, they may just tell Google to go screw, but at the same time they might end up making a compromise with the search giant. If China and Google come to compromise that means that Google does not need to filter their searching then Google has basically threatened the a country with trade sanctions and won, and they did it without an army or any threat of force. There is no Google Army (though if there was I would not screw with them, tazer Nexus 1 anybody)

Good job Google you have balls, and are striking points for the good guys. If Google is successful here, I hope it will open the door to using business power and money as both the stick and the carrot to get other countries to behave. So America, we like to say that we are the most powerful country, the richest country (not sure if we can make that claim at all of late) and most influential country in the world, so why is it that we always use our military? No one dies if Google is successful and no one dies if they fail. I mean yeah I guess the stakes are pretty high for a country, it would look bad for America to make a threat and have our bluff called, it would make us look ineffective, but doesn’t it also make us look ineffective and weak to be fighting 2 wars in places that are a stone throw away from being in the stone age, against a foe that we really can’t win against?

Ok enough before I go on a political rant and get away from this nice little post about Google and their giants balls.

Keeping the Worms Out of Your Apple.... iPhone!

2009-11-23T16:02:00.005-05:00

Recently I have noticed a bunch of articles being written about worms infecting jail broken iPhone. These worms vary in maliciousness from basically Rick Rolling you, to trying to steal your banking information, but they all exploit the same thing. These worms assume that the owner of the jail broken iPhone did not change the SSH password that allows directory level control of the iPhone systems. If you are unaware of what SSH is basically it’s a way to connect to something running Linux, which is what the iPhone OS is based on. Once connected the user can pretty much do whatever they want so long as they have the proper permissions. The problem is that all iPhone have the same password for the ‘root’ user, however only jail broken iPhone give the owner the ability to utilize that SSH. In a world with no jail breaking this would not be an issue since no one could get access to the iPhone through SSH, however in reality we have users that want to both have a jail broken iPhone and the functionality that comes with having the ability to SSH into your device.
The one thing to keep in mind is that when you gain the ability to SSH into the iPhone, you also need to take on the responsibility to protect your device. This means you need to change the friggen SSH password from ‘alpine’ which is what it is for ALL iPhones to something else. You can Google exactly how to do this but suffice to say it is really easy (I googled it for you) and if you can successfully SSH into the phone you can have the password changed in seconds. Now you have an iPhone that is as secure as any Linux computer out there and these worms will not bother you.

RIP: Shaggy, Fred and Daphne

2009-11-22T19:46:00.005-05:00

This circulated the tubes a while back but now it comes to you in t-shirt form! Velma and Scooby Doo as real monster hunters. Alas, it seems, Shaggy, Fred and Daphne did not survive the monster apocalypse so it's up to the nerdy (and apparently hot and toned) Velma and her now raged-filled dog to save the world.

I would love to see a one-shot trade paperback that explains how this came to be and what happened next. You could incorporate all kinds of sweet monsters into it if you played your cards right; vampires, zombies, lychans, maybe a few mummies... Heck, you could even get specific and throw in stuff like the Creeper (he killed Shaggy and took his eyes!) and Deadites and even Jason Voorhees! Velma and Scooby could be on a quest to find the Necronomicon in an effort to put an end to all the madness! Maybe I shouldn't have posted that idea... should have sent it to a couple publishers first... damn. Oh well, every one buy this t-shirt.

Parker! Bring me pictures of Spider-Man!

2009-11-22T19:11:00.005-05:00

We all know Peter Parker has had a hard time holding down a job. He's not loaded like Batman and his job does not necessitate running into danger like Superman's so your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man has always been kinda screwed every time some one needs his help but he was on the clock. But that does not excuse the wall-crawler from robbing a pizzeria!

That's right Spidey fans, some jackass in Tacoma, WA donned the web-slinger's duds and a 9mm and waltzed into a Papa Murphy's pizzeria for his take of the till. That was last Wednesday but, unfortunately, it gets worse. It turns out that on Nov. 4, two Spider-Men walked into a Bank of America in Texas, decked out in Spidey costumes, hooded sweatshirts and guns and apparently got away clean. Here is, I kid you not, a still shot from the bank security camera.

If he's already got the costume on, why did he think he needed the hood? What was he trying to accomplish there? Was he trying to make people think it was a different Marvel Comics hero? "Oh my officer, I was so scared I can't remember if it was Spider-Man or Thor!"

And actually, the cops investigating the bank robbery Spider-Men think one of them was actually a Spider-Woman... insert your own joke here.

I hate to say it but maybe J. Jonah Jameson was right all along. Maybe Spider-Man is a menace. After all, he did get arrested in LA on the Hollywood walk of fame a couple weeks ago for slugging some guy.

My, my, my... what is this world coming to? Before you know it, people dressed as the Fastastic Four are going to be robbing banks and pizzerias because they saw Spider-man do it and they thought it was cool. Blind criminals dressed as devils will try to join in but they'll have walked into Build a Bear workshops by accident! Terrorists are going to dress up as the X-Men to pull off unspeakable acts of evil! Although I'm sure none of them are going to want to dress as The Phoenix, too revealing for Muslim extremists.

Games Workshop Grows a Pair!

2009-11-18T16:36:00.002-05:00

Maybe Games Workshop reads the blog, because it has just come to my attention that the Warhammer 40k movie Ultramarines will be written by Dan Abnett! Now there is an actual hope for the movie, and maybe just maybe this shows that the neck beards over at Games Workshop have grown a pair.

Let Me Google That For You!

2009-11-17T11:38:00.002-05:00

Ok, you may or may not have noticed that I am a bit of a Google fan boy. I remember back when I was in high school and Google first came on the scene I challenged the librarian to a search engine contest. I used the Google “I’m Feeling Lucky” button and she used some other engine, probably Yahoo (points if you can tell me what Yahoo stands for) we both search for some information on a topic I think I was writing a paper on at the time. My search found by far a more relevant result, than any of the top 10 results she received, so I won, and Google won. Basically from that point on I was hooked, and no other search engine would do for me anymore. I have also jumped on to every product that Google puts out, with the exception of Wave, cause I honestly don’t understand it yet and don’t want to spend a lot of time using it. Google has become a huge part of my online life; this is basically do to the fact that they provide services that are free and easy to use. The internet is currently in a phase of clean design and high usability (partly why I think that MySpace is getting pwned so hard right now) The Google products definitely fit the bill, I love the simplicity of the bar at the top with the link to the various services, like mail, calendar, etc. This blog is published by Google using their free Blogger software.

Google’s stated purpose is to organize the world’s information, but they make their money through ads, and all that information is a big part of their ad strategy. Of late there has been a lot of frightened rumblings about the power that Google wields on the internet. They potentially have all your emails from Gmail, any search query you perform while signed into your account (and once your signed in it leave you signed in) the event you are planning via the calendar, as well and any other information you have offered up on the altar of the Google cloud. Having all this information in one place is very convenient, but for some people its also very scary. I used to be a bit afraid of the amount of information that I have made available to Google, and there is the point, it is information that I made available! Google did not force me to subscribe to their products, I could have used one of the many other free mail clients for my personal email, I could use a different calendar (maybe one with kittens). Typically I use whatever I determine is the best at the time for the need I have, when I graduated from college I needed a new mail client and so I started using Gmail, which lead me to use the other Google products too, but I chose to use these products, so I gave Google my information.

Google themselves have of late been producing way to both see what information they have on you, as well as ways to export the information out of Google and potential move it to someplace else on the internet. I totally understand the reasoning for creating this, it gives people the warm fuzzies thinking they can walk away at anytime, but what are you going to do with that information? I personally think that there are 2 types of people that would actually walk away, the first are people that have a ton of information with Google and get scared by that amount Google knows about them, the second are people that have very little information in Google and remove it to basically make themselves as invisible as possible on the internet. The first people are heavy internet users, so what are they going to do with that information other that put it into another set of services, like Yahoo, who will then own all that information. The second type doesn’t really want their info on the web anyway so it’s not a big deal to them to not use these services.

I am definitely the first type, I want to have all my information at my finger tips, either from any computer I have access too, or my phone and to go this well… Google I choose you! (woot Pokémon reference) I do not plan to take my information out of Google, because basically I am not paranoid about them having this information. As the internet moves forward and the cloud becomes more powerful everything will be on the internet somewhere, and at least with Google I am putting my information all in one entities hands.

Recently I have read a lot of articles about Google’s search suggestions. It’s a fun game, you type in part of a search query and see what that search engine brings back for result, and the results are often humorous. I am all for a laugh, but I think the whole suggestion thing is being taken a bit far, while I am not a Google developer I would guess that the reason for the suggestion is to cut down on the amount of typing you need to do before you get to your results, if the suggestion does not have what you are looking for then you keep typing till you are actually searching for what you are looking for on the web. On top of that the suggestion must be based on a computer algorithm and that algorithm will change over time as Google makes changes to the way it does search so I would not put too much effort into thinking about the greater implications of the search suggestions.

Lastly I would just like to briefly talk about Rupert Murdoch. Rupert (I am going call him by his first name) recently came out saying he was going to take all of the News Corp content out of Google, basically blocking Google crawlers from aggregating the information. His goal here is to stop Google from “stealing” his intellectual properties. I put “stealing” in quotes here because, well, Rupert is crazy! He thinks that by doing this he will stop Google from giving access to News Corps properties, properties he wants to sell to the consumers and make money from. I am not some crazy everything should be free person, I think that companies have a right to make money, cause that money goes to the people that work there who are also consumers (the amount of compensation is a totally different argument) Rupert thinks that he can just produce the properties, like the wall street journal and the people that want them will pay to read them.

There are at least 2 things wrong with this approach

1) The audience of people that will do exactly what he wants is not a self sustaining audience. It does not renew on its own, lets use the Journal as the example. The Journal is a subscription (which is the mail pay model for news papers, Ryan correct me if I am wrong here), people sign up for the Journal cause they are interested in reading it and because they know what the Journal is by its reputation. The people that are willing to subscribe to the Journal are already roped into paying for it so that is fine, but this makes it harder to attract new people who are willing to become part of this model. This stops a viral audience, one of the things that the internet does well from view the articles. I am sure if you asked Rupert this would be more or less what he is going for, he wants to stop these people that just casually consumer his content and limit to just those that will pay, well as I said before the people that want to pay are already paying and are already viewing the content so this is not attracting any new eyes, hence this approach is not self-sustaining. If he was to allow the some of the content to be available for free, as well as not blocking the biggest search engine in the world from accessing the materials, casual readers would come across the article, and either they would read it and do nothing (which is what Rupert does not want as this does not make him money) or they might read it and tell someone else to read it or put a link up on Facebook, or tweet the article. If every set of eye balls falls into one of those two categories then the more eyeballs you get to see the article the more likely that the article will be seen by someone that wants to read the Journal and would pay for it! Even if the percentage of the people who read the article and end up paying for it is small that percentage is going to be greater than the number of people that are just willing to pay for it already and are already paying (people die, need a way to keep drawing people in).

2) He can go ahead and do this, but all it will do is make people go to one of the millions of other free sources for the information. I mean imagine it, New Corp blocks Google, now all the people that use Google, which is almost everyone, have a whole where the News Corp material used to be, opening up a hole in the market that can be filled by a someone else, who will provide the same news and free, and if done correctly will make them a lot of money. Rupert would be creating a vacuum, but it would not be a big enough vacuum to change much of anything, unless he could get all the other big media outlets to also block Google too, and I personally think that this will not happen.

Rupert is showing his crazy old man side, he is trying to apply the business model that worked for print news papers to the internet age, an age where click-throughs and referral traffic is important, cause that is how your stuff gets seen on the net, we live in a world where Googling something is a verb in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. To most people Google is the internet it’s the way things are found. If I want information on something I am not going to check if there is an article in the Journal about it, I am going to Google it and if there is an article on what I am looking for I will give it a read.

So Rupert, give it a rest, Google is not clogging up yours tubes or stealing your revenue, and if Google is really affecting your bottom line then the fault lies with you, and a business model that does not work on the internet. Sorry old man but the times they are a changing and you better change too or else be left behind (granted I would not mind being left behind with all his money).

Your father was the captain of a starship for 12 minutes, he saved 800 lives...

2009-11-16T00:11:00.006-05:00

... I dare you to do better. What better existing nerd property to use making an MMO? Star Trek is based on the idea of an ongoing, indefinite journey. Just think, create a character, join a ship, raise to the rank of captain and then build your own ship, explore strange new worlds and new civilizations, boldly go where no man has gone before! The only thing I could think of being better would be a Firefly MMO. Of course the skies of that on-line world would be crowded with gorram Firefly-class transports with Serenity splashed across the side all captained by brown duster- wearing pretty boys.

This is going to be quick. The Star Trek MMO is on it's way! Here's the supposed box art:

And here's a quick clip of the game play:

Looks pretty good to me. And the best part is it would be easy to have universe-changing events. All you would have to do is send out a message to all ships that the borg are invading or something. Check out some of the in game screen grabs too.

Also, here's where R2-D2 was hiding in the new Trek movie. This is confirmed, unlike the last few rumored R2 sightings.

And now for something completely diffrent...

2009-11-15T23:44:00.006-05:00

Actually it's the same thing Spence was just talking about. Net Neutrality. In the event you couldn't slug through Specne's tirade, here's the quick and dirty. Right now, you pay a greedy as hell cable company to connect you to the internet, how much you want to pay depends on how fast you get there but once you are there, access to different web pages all run at the same speed. But if the companies have their way, that won't be the case. Google can afford to pay the ISPs a shit-ton of cash so getting to them will be the same speed as now, but Casual Geekery can pay diddly shit so it could take you 10 minutes to load our page. OR, this could happen: think of it as how you pay for cable access. One flat rate just to connect you to the internet THEN, want to get to iTunes and Pandora? An extra $10 per month thank you! Want to get to YouTube and Hulu also? $10 more please ($15 after the first three months). Like to social network? Well Twitter and FaceBook are free (for the first three months, $10 per month after that). Check out this terrifying graphic for more.

Think this can't happen? It is EXACTLY what they do for premium channels. The only difference is those are luxuries, the internet should be a right, like it is in Finland. The internet is the last great bastion of the basis of our democracy, the idea that every man has an equal voice and an equal chance of being heard. Public television and radio? Bullshit. The internet has had more influence that both of them combined in the few years it has been readily and quickly accessible to the masses. Do not let them take it from you, fight them every way you can think of.

So as we take our leave, support the new head of the FCC, he's one bad mother - shut your mouth. He just may be the John Connor we need to raise from the ashes of greedy asshole- contorlled internet and lead us into a safer, brighter future.

Let My Packets Go!

2009-11-11T12:57:00.003-05:00

If there is one thing I love it is to argue, especially when the topic is academic, I just love the idea of taking a train of thought through to the end, and I don’t get emotionally involved in the argument because again it’s just academic. However the is something in Tech news that I do feel very strongly about, and that is Net Neutrality (total name fail). Net Neutrality, which I will refer to here on out as NN, is the hot button topic where the spheres or technology meet politics.

If you are unaware of what NN is let me give it to you in the most concise why I have heard it explained. Basically NN mean that the Internet Service Providers, such as Comcast, Verizon, etc cannot prioritize the packets running over their network, in essence it would mean that an email packet, a bit torrent packet or a packet from a webpage would all be treated the same way. Without NN regulation Comcast could throttle Hulu traffic because they want you to use you’re their competing streaming web page (not sure if they have one but that is my example). The ISPs are totally against the idea of NN because they want to be able to dictate how the internet works going forward, and will obviously pick things that benefit them rather than benefit the consumers. Comcast has already been investigated by the FCC for throttling bit torrent ( I would like to point out that bit torrent is a totally legit peer to peer service and does not always mean there is piracy).

The FCC is the body that is created to regulate things like the internet and television and telephones. Basically they are there to stop the companies from totally screwing their consumers. Without FCC regulation in the internet it would be open season for the ISP to do whatever they want. Right now there is nothing set in stone, but the ISP are held to basically a best practices which give us the internet we know today, and when they violate these best practices, for instance by throttling bit torrent the FCC investigates.

The debate over NN needs to happen, and I would think it will need to be settled soon. I really hope that when this comes up for a vote that NN will prevail and the FCC will set about putting in regulations that keep the internet from being segmented. Now you might be saying to yourself that the government has no business regulating the internet, the internet should be allowed to regulate its self. This is true, and I don’t want the FCC to start laying down crazy regulation, but what I do want is regulations that stop the ISP from coming in and screwing the customers.

Let me lay out an extreme example for you of a world where there is no NN. In this world the packets you send are sniffed at every turn in the internet pipe line. So you send an email from your Gmail account to your buddy who has a Yahoo mail. Without NN the ISP you are using could hold that email back just because they don’t like Gmail, on top of that Yahoo could reject any email from Gmail, since they would want people to use Yahoo’s mail rather than a competing mail service. Does this sound good to you? I hope not, the amount of anti completive behavior that would result from a lack of NN would be staggering.

Basically the FCC just needs to lay down the law and the law is “You cannot prioritize any packets regardless of their content” and just let the internet get back to being the internet.

I have heard an argument against NN that basically says that things like Google and Twitter get a free ride and the ISP are footing the bill. Let me tell you this is BS! Google pays for the bandwidth they use, as does Twitter, the more people that use them the more bandwidth they use and the more they pay the ISP, basically the ISPs want to double dip. I am all for paying for what you use, if you are uploading HD video all day long and you need more upstream bandwidth then you should have to pay for that bandwidth, but I don’t want my packets to be sniffed and the prioritized based on their destination or content.

John McCain, who I personally did not vote for but is a person I have a decent amount of respect for, is proposing a bill called the something like the “Internet Freedom Act” but basically what it says is that the government cannot regulate the internet, dumb dumb dumb! The name of the bill is total shit too, yes while on the surface the bill is providing freedom because the government is not regulating the internet, but what it does as I have said before is open the internet up to the ISPs. McCain is also the number 1 recipient of money from the Telecom, over $900,000, companies who are for the most part the ISPs (he is not in their pocket or anything, also if you can find me a politician that is not in someone’s pocket I will print this out and eat it) McCain has said himself that he does not understand the internet, and I am not expecting him to (insert age joke here), but I don’t think it’s out of the question for me to expect him not to try to make legislation on something he has no idea about. I would like to paraphrase Dan Carlin (who I think said this) “when you make legislation the most important things is to see how the legislation is pissing off” for NN the legislation is pissing off the ISP and thus it is good.

The ISP like to claim that if the FCC regulates the internet in favor of NN then they will lose all sorts of money, but right now we have a free internet (free in the sense that all packets are the same) and they are making a mint! I think the figure I read said that Comcast had a 22% jump in earnings. A jump during a recession, they are raking in the money. Without NN the ISP would definitely make more money, but is that really the direction we want the internet to go in? I for one as a consumer and pretty heavy internet user want the FCC to regulate in favor of NN and I know that there are many tech people who are in my camp too (well really I am in their camp since I am not popular enough to have a camp) Check out the video below, it’s a clip from the long running and trustworthy show “This Week In Tech” with Leo Laporte.

If you disagree with me definitely send me an email imaglide@gmail.com! I would love to hear what you think, but if you disagree I am going to assume you are either a greedy bastard or out of touch. If you want to help go check out http://www.savetheinternet.com/ and sign the petition, they will send your request to your politician and get them to make the right call when it comes to voting on this.

This is what happpens when you abuse little people

2009-11-09T18:39:00.006-05:00

Over the years, three movies have stood out in my mind as totally and completely abusing midgets, now more commonly known as little people. These flicks are (in no particular order) The Wizard of Oz, Return of the Jedi and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The reason these three are the worst offenders should be obvious, Munchkins, Ewoks and Oompa Loompas. The only real question is, which is the bigger crime? Dressing up little people as semi retarded man-child things?

Dressing up little people as Teddy Bears?

Or dressing little people up as psychedelic acid-trip nightmare creatures that sing perfectly without rehearsal?

Only you can decide but either way, I'd say the little people inside the suits just struck back at LucasFilm Ltd. during the Today Show's Halloween special. I present to you, Ewoks, drinking, brawling, moonwalking and humping Al Roker!!!!

Yeah that's great, you just killed three people

2009-11-09T17:32:00.006-05:00

By now, you've all seen the trailers for that flick "The Box". In the event you haven't, here's the setup. James Marsden and Cameron Diaz are a happily married NASA technician and school teacher who are going broke for some reason. One day, they are visited by a gentleman who drank acid or something and brings them a mysterious box containing nothing but a button. He then makes them an offer, push the button and you get $1 million but someone in the world you don't know will die. Check out the trailer. (sorry about the asinine intro, it's the only trailer I could find to embed.)

While there are some good aspects of Sci-fi, horror, conspiracy and I'm going to say aliens, I'm not super excited to see it. However, after seeing that trailer over and over on TV, I laughed my ass off when I saw this little gem on Funny or Die.

The Button - watch more funny videos

That's what I always thought should happen whenever people in movies and on TV are presented with a moral dilemma. Imagine how much easier it would have been if the castaways on Lost just shot Ben Linus the first time he double crossed someone? How awesome would it have been if the Joker said "you'll never kill me because of some misplaced sense of self righteousness..." and Batman said "Fuck this" and dropped him? What if Luke, sans-hand on Cloud City said "oh sure Dad, I'll join the dark side with you, just help me up" Then he force pulled Vader's lightsaber off him and cut him in half?

Man! I mention H.P. Lovecraft a lot on this blog

2009-11-05T01:38:00.003-05:00

While I read and enjoyed a number of H.P. Lovecraft's works over the years I've never been a HUGE fan. I treat the godfather of horror/science fiction much like I do Monty Python - I like it, I don't have a boner for it.

That said, I have mentioned H.P.'s Cthulhu Mythos more than almost any other topic on this blog with the exception of the undead. Here's a little something that was brought to my attention on YouTube

Just another evil attempt to make children think the great priest of the great old ones is cuddly and not the one that will rip out their souls and ... chew them... or something. It's been a while since I read the Call of Cthulhu.

Law Suits, More Like Zoot Suits

2009-11-04T16:13:00.002-05:00

I sent most of last week on a vision quest in the desert of California, so I have been a little out of the loop on tech news hence the lack of posts. Luckily Ryan is not as crunch and has been posting alone, but I am back and to ease back into this as well as to get my dander up again about something I wanted to bring up the update on the whole “There’s a Map for That” ad campaign being run by Verizon. ATT is suing Verizon over the ads claiming the ad “mislead consumers into believing that AT&T doesn't offer ANY wireless service in the vast majority of the country.” Basically they are mad because the casual non-nerdy consumer will not be able to tell that the whole in the map are not areas with no coverage rather they are areas that lack 3g. Personally I think this is a great attack, and it might be hard for ATT to win this battle since the ad is pretty clear to anyone in the know that the map is just about 3g and not about total coverage, but since 3g is a cell phone buzz word that all of the providers are throwing around most consumers will have at least heard it before and probably think it is cell phone coverage. On the other hand most judges are not all that tech savvy especially if they try the case in Texas, so maybe they will win. I think the end goal here is to have Verizon stop the ad campaign basically because they don’t want to deal with the ATT law suit. Will it work? I say no.

(Stunned Silence)

2009-10-28T22:19:00.005-04:00

Got $19,999.95? Want a land cruiser/tank? Well have I got a deal you you sir! This deranged piece of equipment is available now on Amazon.com for the low, low price of 5 cents shy of $20k.

It's the JL421 Badonkadok Land Cruiser/ Tank! Do you a (I assume lightly) armored tank to cruise around the desert in? Do you need a tank to intimidate that guy at work into giving you your parking spot back? Do you... I've run out of clever things to say because I'm in shock that someone actually built this behemoth.

Somehow, I ran across this beast on Amazon when I was looking for Firefly comics and this popped up in the "Customers who viewed this item also viewed" category and took me by surprise. At first I thought it may be a joke, especially given the crazier and clearly photo shopped pics in the gallery. So I punched the name into Google and what do I find, references to this nutso craft as far back as 2005. Either the guy keeps making them or no one has bought the first one yet.

So what do you get for your $20,000? I'm glad you asked fine sir! It's got room for five inside the "armored" plated hull and five more on the roof. A 400 watt sound system with a PA function, all kinds of trim and under lighting as well as a movable control stick that allows you to drive inside via the included camera or with your head sticking through the roof.

I have no idea how practical this non-road legal mini Jabba the Hut sailbarge is. Not sure how much cargo it could haul, not sure how impact resistant the steel plating is, not sure how quick of a getaway you could make at 40 mph top speed. But I am sure that if you roll around town in this baby, you will get pulled over and then taunted for spending $20,000 on it.

Shut up Alexis Castle!!!!

2009-10-28T00:05:00.004-04:00

No one else in the 'Verse is happier than I that one of my man-crushes, Nathan Fillion, has steady work on the ABC series Castle.

Fillion has found the perfect role to play, a mystery writer with child-like joy who is "a bit of a douche" according to Fillion. Now, there was much hype when this photo leaked out from the set of Castle for the then upcoming Halloween episode.

If I have to explain who he is dressed as, get the hell off my blog. At last, the long awaited return of former Browncoat Malcom Reynolds, captain of the Firefly class vessel Serenity! that's right, it seems that Fillion and the writers of Castle have an awesome sense of humor dressing him up as his well known geek counterpart (or according to the show a "space cowboy"). What I find especially impressive is that I bet Castle's target demographic is very different than Firefly's so this is basically an in joke to the online geek world.

There's one problem, Castle's daughter is kind of a bitch. Watch the clip. Don't worry the actual bit you want is in the first few seconds.

Shut up little girl! We all want Mal back! Although I have to admit when you say "space cowboy" out loud it does sound kinda stupid. Makes it even more impressive that Joss Whedon was actually able to pitch the show to Fox.

One Mans Trash is Another Man's Speakers

2009-10-26T10:10:00.003-04:00

Terracycle is allowing nerds to reduce their carbon footprint. Finally nerds can do something useful with all those Cheeto packages that are littering your desk, send them over to Terracycle and they will turn those packages of delicious orange dust into speakers.
Terracycles a company in New Jersey, “insert joke here”, is doing something they call “upcycling” where they take trash and turn it into useful products and then sell them to consumers. For instance for 19.99 you can buy speakers made of Cheeto packets, and backpacks made of Capri sun pouches ( I just hope the backpack does not puncture through and leak everywhere (maybe this only happens to me)). Check out their webpage for other interesting things they have “upcycled”
I am all for this, while I am not a crazy environmental activists I am all for anything that helps out especially when the end result is something pretty cool. There is really something for everyone here; hipsters will love the irony for walking around with a messenger bag made for Capri Sun juice packets, hippies can rock out to some crunchy jams with some Sun Chip speakers, there are also biodegradable flowers pots for those with a green thumb, and a ton of other neato products. So, nerds keep eating your Cheetos, but send those packages in to Terracycle, together we can make something far more useful than a painting on Campbell's soup cans.

... of the Dead

2009-10-26T07:21:00.004-04:00

It seems that as long as George A. Romero is willing to put pen to paper and jot down something about the living dead, some studio out there is willing to give him the cash and access to cameras so he can make a film about it. Check out the trailer to his upcoming film, George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead.

Ok, here's the basic plot line: humans are trying to wait out the still rotting corpses by taking refuge on Plum Island off the coast of Delaware (which does not exist) but wait, there's a twist this time! The humans are working on a way to bring zombies back to life. Ummm... even if there were a cure, I'm not sure it would be any good unless you gave it someone a couple hours after infection because you can't fight decades of decomposition.

Before I pass judgment on this little flick written and directed by one of my heroes let's check out a clip.

Not at all sure what the point of that was but OK. Let the judgment begin: George, one of the things that made your zombie movies so awesome was that we only got one flick per decade and they were rife with era-specific social commentary. This is George's third zombie flick this decade and after the weak but enjoyable Land of the Dead, I'm not sure he has much else to say. Are you making up for the fact that there was no 90s installment of the series by piling them on now?

Now, you could look at Diary of the Dead as a reboot of the series because it documents the initial outbreak seen in Night of the Living Dead with a modern setting. But if that's the case, I'm not sure what that movie had to say... well, actually I do. I suppose it was about the instant celebrity possible peopel think they can get if they have a video camera and YouTube. The guy opts to keep charging batteries instead of saving his friends... deep.

Here's my biggest problem with the newer flicks, I don't want my zombies to evolve or change or learn or anything like that. I want them to be zombies. At the end of Land of the Dead the zombies wander off after feasting on the rich of Fiddler's Green and the hero just lets them go? Why? Just because they chowed down on the evil rich people doesn't mean they won't much a few poor folks they come across as they wander out of the city. And here's the proof that not even our hero believes the zombies have changed - he continues his trek north in the Dead Reckoning, an armored, armed to shit truck! Why didn't he get out and walk or use a more energy efficient car from the Fiddler's Green motor pool? BECAUSE HE'S STILL AFRAID OF FRACKING ZOMBIES!

Zombies don't change Geroge, stop trying to make them. You're never going to teach enough of them to eat something else. Sure, Bub from Day of the Dead started ignoring the people but how long did it take to teach that one zombie that little trick? Take a note from Zach Snyder and just make awesome zombie movies please.

Maybe the helicopter is made of chocolate

2009-10-25T12:57:00.003-04:00

Only 23 more days until Left 4 Dead 2 comes to stores and I can stop rhythmically gunning my way through the original game on auto pilot and only playing the finales.

This is a quick update to show you the newest trailer that looks like a compilation of in game cut scenes that depicts the plight of our four heroes as they battle their way across zombie infested 'Nawlins.

They really didn't need to sell me any more on this game but that trailer totally did. Meelee weapons galore, new special infected, crazy environments and AWESOME regular weapon upgrades. Why do I love gunning down zombies so much? I think the hardest part of a real zombie apocalypse would be having to act like I wasn't wicked excited so as not to creep out the people I was trying to survive with. Man... maybe I should go see a shrink or something.

Grandpa Ryan, tell us again how stuff on the Net used to be free.

2009-10-24T23:40:00.006-04:00

In an attempt to become exactly as popular and socially relevant as Napster is, Hulu is going to start charging you for video content next year.

Damn that graphic is bigger than I thought

It seems News Corp's (which owns Hulu) Deputy Chairmen Chase Carey has decided that his company gots to get paid for broadcast content online. Here's what the typical greedy fuck with the Geraldo Rivera moustache had to say:
"I think a free model is a very difficult way to capture the value of our content. I think what we need to do is deliver that content to the consumers in a way where they will appreciate that value."

Wasn't lying about the mustache was I?

Translation, "You don't appreciate that fact that stuff we spent no money making is free so we're going to teach you a lesson... plus I need a new yacht."

Bet they wish that little slogan wasn't all over the web site

I have no real comment on the monetization of Hulu because I watch very little on it. However, I like the idea that it's free and it's there. But get ready to watch all you want before they throw up the pay wall. The word on the street is that Hulu has no plan on how to start charging yet and it may leave current offerings untouched while adding another level of paid "premium" content that you have to shell out cash for.

Either way, it's got to help boost News Corp's falling profits which I sure are not hurt at all by Carey's $10 million signing bonus and $8.3 million per year salary that he got when he returned to the company earlier this year. Business as usual in the corporate world.

So as Hulu is poised to enter the realm of "I like it but I ain't paying for it" in the same way that Napster and The Real World did, the anarchist in me considering burning down the HQ of another media conglomerate and operating a pirate television station like one of my heroes from the 1980s.

(Clever title describing my hatred of Apple here)

2009-10-23T22:33:00.009-04:00

So Windows 7 is out and I love it. I will give a full list of reasons why later this weekend but it took no time at all for Apple to do what they do best, use a slick image to crap all over every PC out there. Take a look.

Gee wiz! Mac is so young and hip and cool! Awesome! God Almighty I hate these fracking ads! But I digress from the point. I'm not about to begrudge Apple (or whoever they have in advertising) for coming up with a great marketing campaign. The commercials are funny and before the righteous indignation boils up inside of me, I do chuckle a bit because Windows and PCs do have their share of problems. The Vista era Mac vs PC ads were great because Vista was/is a piece of crap. So much so that I stayed away from it until I replaced my XP laptop a few weeks ago and the new one came preinstalled with Vista. In the month I suffered Vista, I experienced more problems with it than I care to recall and I quickly and quietly took it out back and shot it in the head with Windows 7 as soon as I could.

Here's my real problem with this new set of ads. First, they obviously had to be made months in advance of Windows 7's release so Apple didn't even have time to get specific with any flaws in the new OS. If there are problems, point them out and we'll all have a really good laugh. I'm fine with that. Second, are they really focusing on the "hassle" of importing all your shit onto a new OS? That's the best they got? Ohhh ZING.... I guess. Hate to break it to you, but when I upgrade to 7, all my stuff was saved on my hard drive and it was just a matter of rearranging the directories on a few files to make everything hunky dory. Oh no! That's sooooo much harder than switching to an entirely different OS that is set up in no way like the platform you've used your whole life and is so damned simple and restrictive a trained monkey can use it.

If you're going to crap on Windows 7 at least come up with something good. Before I go I will give Apple points for this one though, 80s Miami Vice PC cracks me up for some reason (even though it's supposed to be the mid 90s).

But to be fair, Apple should have appropriately aged back Mac also until he was a just a long flannel shirt wearing, Starbucks guzzling, Kurt Cobain wannabe rocking out to Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Windows fanboy in me aside, here's what everyone needs to remember when they claim their OS is perfect and I'm talking to companies and fanboys alike.
Oh and fret not Windows fans... I have it on good authority that PC totally banged that chick in the second video! BOOM! In your face Justin Long! Where is Bruce Willis to help you now!?

Go Bill Go!

2009-10-22T10:33:00.005-04:00

Hate on Bill Gates all you want (that picture is a little creepy), but he is a good guy. As the richest man in the world and head of Microsoft, he has taken a lot of hate over the years. Anyone with as much money as he has is always vilified by the masses since they don’t have all that money too. Usually the cry is for those rich people to do something good with their money, not just fly around in private jets, while ruling the world as part of the secret government.

Well then Bill Gates is the man, basically he has been using his massive wealth to help humanitarian causes all over the world. Just take a look at the webpage for the Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation; they have paid out almost $3 billion since 2008. That’s a lot of dough but granted that is like what the US government spends on stamps for a year. I love to see people spending their wealth on worthwhile things, especially when that money is not coming directly from the tax payers.

Now Gates is donating $100,000 to help fight malaria. The money will go to creating a gum and chocolate that will help fight malaria in children. That's good since the old way to fight it was the tonic in a gin and tonic and we don’t want kids walking around all wasted. I don’t really have anything super snarky to say, i just wanted to post this because really cool. Go Bill!

This is not the Driod Your Looking For...

2009-10-22T09:31:00.004-04:00

I have been pretty lax in posting recently and I apologize for that, but there has not really been anything in tech news that I have found all that interesting recently. Even this post is about a topic that I don’t find all that interesting, but since it falls into the domain of mobile phones - which is something I post about a lot - I figured I would do a post.

What I want to talk about is all the Android scuttlebutt (not sure if this word usage is correct, but I don’t really care). In case you are not aware or live under a rock, Android is Google’s mobile phone OS. The big deal about this OS is that is supposed to be for open development (which Google seems to be a bit two headed about).

Open development is awesome in theory; if enough developers get behind it the possibilities are pretty limitless. Those developers would be able to create awesome applications and tweaks that made the mobile phone experience amazing. Any gripe with the phone or OS could be solved with some quick coding and since it is open, Google would not be QAing these apps. This is the total opposite of Apple, who reviews the apps before letting them into the app store (just Google “Apple and Google Voice”). I have mixed feelings about this, but the overall reasoning is that they don’t want apps that will detract from the user experience, and that is the name of the game!

We are quickly getting to a point where hardware is becoming far less important than the things that hardware gives you access to. This is partly because hardware has become sufficiently robust to support almost anything we as consumers need it to do. This is especially true in the desktop/ laptop market. People have basically been buying machines that are way, way more powerful than they need to be to surf the net, send email, and play Bejeweled. So unless you are a gamer and you actually need the hardware to be up to snuff, it is not all that important. Take netbooks they are basically laptops that only exist to give you access to the internet.

Ok, back to mobile phones. Mobile phones are moving in a similar direction as desktops and laptops. As more phones come out, the functionality that those phones are capable of get more and more similar. For instance, most smart phones, and some non smart phones can use GPS and Wi-Fi to access the Internet. This is on top of messaging and calling that phones have been able to do since the late 90s. The actual needs vary from consumer to consumer, but I foresee a time when almost all phones will have GPS, Wi-Fi, email, Internet browsing and music playing. They will just come standard, and the networks will support all these features. In order to differentiate themselves to the consumers, the phone companies will need to provide all the same things their competitors offer and some things that differentiates their phone from all the others: the way to do this is application functionality. They will want to tout the things their phone can do in terms of interface and ease of use, or “user experience”.

Open development is technically a great boon to the “user experience” argument, as it allows the developers to rapidly develop things to make the user experience better, and there would be no restriction on this development, hence “open”. Apple has crippled the non-jail broken iPhone from having multiple applications running in the background. It has rejected any app that in its eyes reproduces any functionality that is native to the iPhone. In a true open development environment, the consumer would get to pick and choose the experience they want from the handset.

Historically open development has not been we received by the general consumers, take Linux for instance. Tech geeks love to tout it as the best OS. It’s usually free and anyone can develop for it. In comparison to Linux, the Apple operating systems as well as the Microsoft operating systems are really, really closed down in comparison to Linux but because of the user experience those operating systems have captured massive consumer market share. Apple has recently been stealing market share from Microsoft by running ads to attract consumer to the “better” user experience, as in no viruses, spy ware, and crashes.

However the Apple operating systems are totally locked down and are only intended to be run on approved Apple hardware devices. I am solidly in the Microsoft camp when it comes to operating systems, my brain just thinks in Windows. I could do a different rant all about the MS vs Apple crap but that is not the point of this post.

Oh right... the point. The point is that user experience is the thing that attracts the consumer’s and allows companies to eat up the market share. There’s a lot of competition in the mobile market and the goal of the providers is to attract as many customers as possible and get them to pay for their service (duh!) I have hypothesized before that Verizon would kick ass and take names if they got some better phones and I still hold this to be true. Yes, they have the best network but we as consumers also need cool devices to utilize that network. If all your phone can do is make calls, I can go on any network and do that (well maybe not AT&T in the Bay Area and NYC... and half the country if you want 3G).

I need a phone that can make calls and do other things and do them well and with an awesome user experience. Well Verizon is getting Droid (did you know that Lucas owns the rights to that word?, check out the fine print in the Droid commercial) Droid is an Android phone (ooo clever marketing name). It’s one of many that are rolling out currently and I would bet that within the next year or so, the majority of carriers will all have Android phones. This will make Android more widely spread and technically it should make available all the benefits of the “open development” to all Android users.

Before I get into the problems I have with this I would like to throw out one more prediction. I am going to predict that Android will rock the iPhone, but not be for at least two years or so (just enough time for my AT&T contract to end). But it’s going to take those two years for Android to start gaining traction. Its going to take two years because as we see the market flood with Android phones, developers will have to write code that in some respects take the different hardware into consideration. Especially if the applications are going to run fast and utilize optimized hardware features that will vary from phone to phone and chip to chip. Potentially, this will mean that developers may only create applications for certain types of phones. In addition to that someone needs to push the eco-system for the phones. The iPhone has Apple pushing the app store but I find it hard to believe that the phone makers will be pushing the application environments for the Android. Rather they will talk about the cool hardware and software their individual phones will have, which is basically what they do now.

The other issue with open dev is that there is no QA process, kinda like what Apple has with the apps, the community would need to be very open, much more watch doggie, and helpful to weed out Android apps that could potentially be harmful, or just plan suck. I mean, if I was a virus writer, I would totally write something that on the surface looks like a cool app, make it free, and then when people download and install it I now have another phone on my zombie bot net. If there is no code review or QAing on the apps the Android eco-system is open to these kinds of threats. Google would be capable of performing this QA, but that would go against their open development goal with the operating system. Not that they have never lied, or changed their minds, before.

Ok, this post is getting pretty long, which is probably good since we have not had anything up on the blog recently, so I will wrap it up. We are going to see a lot of Android phones, coming out in the next few months, Verizon is going to pimp the hell out of the Droid to get people to either stay at Verizon because now they have a “kinda” cool phone, or maybe attract some people over to Verizon (this one I find somewhat less likely) but it will be about two years before we really see the impact Android will have on the market and start to see it stealing market share from the likes of the iPhone and Blackberry, which I think is still the number one smart phone on the market right now.

Then again I could be totally wrong. If you disagree with me or have a comment, or if you actually read this please leave a comment, however if you are a troll, well screw off.

There was a fire fight! (aka Geek Fail)

2009-10-11T19:26:00.002-04:00

I must be slipping in my old age. Check this out.

Apparently the legendary Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day is actually coming to theaters Oct. 30. I have heard of the sequel being in the works for years but never heard that production had started or that filming had commenced in Boston. I must have had a geek stroke (or as one lovely lady put it “geek fail”) to have JUST realized that the flick was coming out 19 days before it opens.

But… hey! The flick is actually coming out! Here’s the break down: The brothers have been laying low in Ireland for the last decade since they torn the Boston underworld a new one. But one day, a member of the Yakavetta (played by Judd Nelson) crime family decides to draw the brothers out by murdering a priest friend of theirs.

In much the same way the original flick was more about Willem Dafoe’s FBI character than the Saints, this one will focus on Agent Smecker’s protégé, Agent Eunice Bloom played by Julie Benz. She’s hunting the brothers during their new bout in America with the help/hindrance of the three Boston detectives from the first film who wound up helping the Saints in the climatic finale.

Also returning is Billy Connolly as The Duke and David Della Rocco as himself though I would assume only in a dream sequence seeing as how he’s really, really dead. Also appearing is Peter Fonda? How did they get him? Screw it… check out the full theatrical trailer.

Now the thing I’m most excited for is the fact that writer/director Troy Duffy may actually get a paycheck from this movie seeing as how his own hubris screwed him out of one on the first flick. Yes, the story of Duffy’s fall is almost as widely know as the movie itself – especially since Duffy signed a release and let a couple of his friends document his rise from bar tender to filmmaker in their documentary, Overnight. That doc has been described as better than The Boondock Saints by some and did about as well at the box office. Most people know that Boondock Saints wound up making a decent profit on DVD but few people know Duffy saw zero dollars from the home movie sales.

So when Oct. 30 rolls around go find a theater playing All Saints Day and buy a ticket. After all, Duffy hasn’t worked in movies in 10 years and I think he’s been punished long enough. Check out his online diary of the making of the new flick and dust off your DVD Boondock Saints and psych yourself up for the end of the month. I know I will.

Call me when it’s a real Portal

2009-10-11T02:00:00.003-04:00

Check out another great item from ThinkGeek. Presenting the latest product from the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center; It’s the Interactive Portal Shirt!

Each shirt has a 5.8 GHZ wireless camera right above an LCD display that displays what the other shirt is recording. Apparently they originally made the shirts to be actual portals but 128 test subjects were injured or maimed in the testing phase. That’s a shame because until I can leap into another person Neo Style I’m not dropping $100 on EACH SHIRT. That’s right, you need to pay $100 twice to get the effect. Just like in the game you need a blue and an orange portal for the gimmick to work.

Check out this video.

Now, I’m going to be honest. The price is the only sticking point with me. That’s a wicked fun concept for two people to wear around. Turns out the electronics are completely removable so the shirts can be washed and you can actually plug in a DVD player or video game system into the shirt and play it while your buddy just stands there and can only watch upside down. I’d think about it if they were $50 a piece but I’m sure they’ll come down in price. After all, the technology is being used for goofy stuff like this as opposed to something like military adaptive camouflage.

If this technology is available to ThinkGeek now, imagine what the government has cooked up with it. We’re talking full on Predator camo here.

I was once told by a very reliable source that back in the 80s, the government could easily read a document over your shoulder from space using 80s satellite technology… and it’s just been in the last few years that Google Earth has allowed us (civilians) to just see cars. So if Black Ops hasn’t developed full on active camouflage by now I’m actually going to be very disappointed. They’ve been trying ever since 1943 with the Philadelphia Experiment.

If MI-6 can do it, the CIA should be able to (feel free to stop at the 20 second mark to avoid the mind numbing crap that forced them to reboot the James Bond series). And once again… call me when it’s a real portal.

Are You Frigeen Kidding Me!

2009-10-09T12:36:00.004-04:00

Why the hell would anyone want an Xbox signed by Sarah Palin, especially when it costs $1.1 million? Check it out here.

The actual Xbox 360 with Palin's John Hancock on it

I personally don’t want anything signed by that idiot, but I could imagine some hipsters trying to be all ironic owning this. However hipsters don’t typically have 1.1 million dollars ( I mean come on, they need to spend that money on skinny jeans and crappy music… oh burn). I took a look at the auction and surprise, surprise there are no bids. On top of that the person that posted the auction, dmorrill32, has a feedback score of 0 and the requested method of payment is “money bookers” not Paypal. On top of that but only “pre-approved buyers” can bid, and they need to email the poster to qualify. Is the dude trying to compile a list of morons with a lot of money? When I think about this I feel a bit like Lewis Black “If it weren’t for my horse”

The auction contains a quote from the poster; take a look at it below:
“I live in Alberta Canada and I have always wanted to drive the Alaskan highway from my home near Edmonton Alberta, all the way to Alaska. This trip is about a 7000km / 4300mi round trip. I figured that since I was going up there anyway, I should try to see the most famous person from that state, so I timed my trip with the governor’s picnic in Wasilla. When the governors picnic took place there were hordes of people trying to see her, but I pushed my way through the crowd to the front of the line. When I was in front of Sarah Palin, I told her that I had traveled three days to see her and asked her to sign my Xbox360. She said it was the most extravagant thing she had ever been asked to sign. I shook her hand, removed myself from the crowd, and then I packed up my Xbox360 and headed home. It was one of the greatest thrills of my life to have watched Sarah Palin on CNN, SNL, Youtube, and then to see her right in front of me.”

Here's this moron getting his Xbox 360 signed by the worst governor ever.

Firstly I question the sanity of this dmorrill32, meeting the Governor of Massachusetts would be cool, but I would not drive many hours to do it, nor would I “push my way to the front of the line” mostly cause I would probably get tackled or shot or something, and because just don’t care enough to do it, I would wait in the line. An additional knock to this dude's sanity is that he posted this now. Not during the election, or when the Palin lovers were out in full support. Had he posted this during the 2008 election he would have stood a chance, although a small one that some rich repub would want to own this piece of memorabilia. But now!? I think the GOP just wants Sarah to disappear into the background (I know I do) and so they can forget about her and the damage she did to their presidential candidate. Also I think I read somewhere that we are in a recession and people are trying not to spend money on stupid stuff.

Next is the fact that Xbox’s have over a 50% failure rate, what depth of shame would you reach if your million dollar Xbox with Palin scrawl on there was to fail. I guess if you spent $1.1 million on an Xbox you probably would not play it, but if you were dumb enough to buy this, you are also dumb enough to use that Xbox.

Lastly I would like to reiterate the following quote “It was one of the greatest thrills of my life to have watched Sarah Palin on CNN, SNL, Youtube, and then to see her right in front of me”, had this dude been selling the Xbox for twice or even three times the market price for the same Xbox I would almost believe that quote, but he obviously got the Xbox signed to sell it on eBay. So only the idea of the money he was going to maybe make was what was giving him the “greatest thrills of my life”

Ok I need to calm down before my head explodes. Hopefully either eBay will see this and take it down, so those “pre-approved buyers” don’t get hosed, or at the very least I hope no one bids on it. I would just like to in conclusion call this guy a Giant Jack Ass.
Thank you

No Tweets for Me

2009-10-09T12:35:00.001-04:00

This should be a quick post. Yesterday for anyone that follows me on Twitter, I tweeted that it was a slow Twitter day. Basically, I was checking my Tweetdeck and I was not seeing any new posts. I thought this was strange, as I follow a fair amount of very tweety people (“tweety” is like chatty but on Twitter and yes I made this up). I was able to see my posts, but all the posts in my columns were old. At first I thought this was because no one was saying much of anything, but later, I learned that something was clogging up the tubes over at Twitter and posts by people you follow were not ending up in the feed. However this was not happening to everyone, just some users. Twitter agreed that something was wrong and they were looking into it.

Twitter is known for its outages and fail whales, so this is not really anything big, more just par for the course for the popular social networking site. However I was one of the users who experienced the strange phenomenon so I wanted to at least write an entry about it. If you (the one person that reads this blog) experienced this too leave a comment and we commiserate together.

It’s like Teddy Ruxpin… if he were built by Cyberdyne Systems

2009-10-09T01:24:00.003-04:00

The Teddy Bear. Childhood friend. Named after a president. Sent from the future to protect you.

Well not quite. This is the Army’s prototype Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot or BEAR (very clever) that is designed to haul wounded soldiers off the battlefield without putting other soldiers in danger.

Built by Vecna Technologies out of Cambridge, MA, BEAR can haul 500 lbs, either stand 6 feet tall or “kneel” to only a few feet. BEAR can act as a recon robot, can lift more than wounded soldiers and got placed as number 11 on Newsweek’s 15 best examples of Weapon Porn. Check out this demo video by Vecna.

I’m all for ANYTHING that saves a US soldier’s life but this thing has a goddamned teddy bear head on it. Apparently the Vecna company is run and staffed entirely by 15-year old Japanese girls. They say the reason is to reassure victims as they are rescued but I’d like to see the research that backs that up.

Now, I’ve never been shot or hit by shrapnel or stabbed in a battlefield (one time I got a splinter on a soccer field but that may be different) but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to make me feel better. I imagine a reassuring sight is more like the medical chopper swooping in, the 40 ton tank rolling up to shield me from fire or Dr. Manhattan in his black Speedo.

By the logic they’re putting out there, then medics should wear teddy bear shaped helmets. BEAR with me here for a second (rimshot), I think they should have put a freaking Terminator’s head on that thing! I don’t care who we’re fighting in the future, Islamic extremists, the Chinese, Canadians… they'’ll all be terrified as a swarm of Terminator-headed rescue robots sweep in to survey the area or pluck fallen soldiers from the area.

Seriously though, kudos to Vecna for looking out for our boys in tan. Since you’re local, feel free to send us a BEAR for mature, responsible testing that in no way involves flipping my boss’ car on its side in the parking lot.

Too Little, Too Late Verizon

2009-10-06T11:30:00.003-04:00

I was, until recently, a Verizon Wireless customer. Despite the facts that Verizon definitely has the best service coverage nationally, and is ranked the number 1 wireless provider, I switched to AT&T, and I bet you can guess why. If you guessed iPhone, you would be correct. I don’t live in New York and I don’t live in the Bay Area, I live in Boston and in Boston, AT&T works fine (if I start to have problems I will definitely write something about it). Coverage is great and all, but a phone is so much more than just a device for conveying voices from one handset to another. Rather, what the phone can do is important. A case could definitely be made that things like the iPhone are not really even phone, but that’s a different topic.

I see today that Verizon is going to start carrying Android phones, and you know what I say to this? Too Little, Too Late. Phones need an ecosystem in order to succeed. They need functionality that is both built into the phone itself and extensionality that is built in through applications. I love Google, and when Android came out I was all for it. I could see a place where Android would be the OS of choice since it was so easy to develop for and that development was supported by Android. But this never really came to pass. Android exists, and there are some things developed for it, but it still does not come close to the ecosystem for the iPhone; despite the fact that Apples is way more closed and oppressive than Google in this regard, I mean just look at Google Voice.

Recently some Android developers came under fire for creating ROMS for the Android phones. The lawyer end of Google told them to stop because they were including proprietary Google code in their ROMs. They included Google’s mobile apps and Google’s lawyers gave the developers a cease and desist for including them, since the mobile apps themselves are not open source.
Now Google is a company and thus they have lawyers. These lawyers do what all lawyers do, they try to enforce rules to protect their companies interests while at the same time Google’s developers, the people that want to make software and the internet more open, support and are part of the developer communities. So there is a little of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing between the Google developers and the Google lawyers. The developer community, which is small compared to the iPhone community, seems to be mainly geeky techie people (this is not a bad thing). It seems to me that the Android phones are more of a toy for the tech savvy, the people that like to dismantle their gadgets and write new and better code for their toys. This brings me to my main point.

Verizon is jumping on the bandwagon but they are doing it wrong. Verizon, for the longest time, has never had any good phones; they had and have great service (just watch their new ad below), but on that service, the consumers are given little choice.

Now Verizon is going to have Android phones, and while these phones are “cooler” than the phones they usually have, they will not be enough and the reason is that none of these phones have an ecosystem that really jumps out to the consumer. Verizon says they will support Google Voice, no details on how or to what extent yet, and that is a selling point. However, eventually Apple will allow it too (I suspect), mooting that selling point. I don’t think that the Android phones will really cause people to switch to Verizon, but it will do more to stop people that are already Verizon customers from making the jump to another provider. But will it be enough?

Probably not, but it could be if Verizon gets in there and helps to create an ecosystem the Android phones can exist in. A place where the phones are not just a sophisticated piece of technology, but a great gadget with loads of extensionality, and fun. But as we have seen in the past Verizon does not really care about the consumer, so at the end of the day Verizon is totally half assing this. They are getting coolish phones, but not going full on to the coolest phones, the phones that could not only be a boon to their advertising, but then they would have awesome phones and awesome service, launching them way, way out in front of any of their competitors. But, as I said, Verizon does not really care about the customer, yeah there is a map for that, but it would be so much better if there was a map and an app for that too.

Warhammer, more like Lamehammer

2009-10-05T16:29:00.008-04:00

Ok, let me nerd out here for a minute, I would suggest getting a trash bag to keep yourself clean of Cheetos dust (everyone knows that the side affect of nerding out is Cheetos dust). It was recently made public that there is going to be a Warhammer 40k movie. I love Warhammer 40,000, but not in the way you probably think. I love the books, Dan Abnett specifically. I have never played the miniatures game, Warhammer or Warhammer 40k, or the MMO (I will get into the MMO in a minute) but Dan Abnett writes some kick ass science fiction. I personally think it is some of the best scifi being written today. There are a lot of fan boys out there that don’t really like Abnett because he tends to take the Warhammer IP and make it his own, but he does this in a fantastic way. I know that part of the appeal of playing RPGs (the non video game versions) is that you get to inject your own fantasy into the world, and sometimes things like books and movies tend to canonize things that might not jibe with your fantasy. But you know what? Fan boys are fan boys and they sometimes need to deal. This is one of those times.

The Warhammer 40k IP is a really rich and so much could be pulled out of it that is good, so long as it is done in the correct way, and this movie and the things that have come out in the past have never lived up to the potential they could have, at least not in my option.

In cases you are unfamiliar with what Warhammer is I will give you a quick rundown. There are two basic types of Warhammer. There is regular Warhammer, which takes place in a middle ages type world with elves and orcs and humans and they are all fighting each other (sound familiar?). It’s basically high fantasy. Then there is Warhammer 40,000. Warhammer40k basically takes the things from the high fantasy version of Warhammer and launches them all into space. There is a huge mythology worked into both versions, though personally I like the one from 40k better which, in a nut shell, is that humans are roaming around the galaxy fighting a massive war against the forces of Chaos (Chaos is the primary evil in the Warhammer world). Some of the Chaos are traitors from the Humans that chose to ally themselves with the “dark powers”. It gets a lot more complex than that, and there is even a notion that the Humans are actually in the wrong and Chaos is in the right, it’s all a matter of perspective. If you want to learn more about it check out the 40k wiki.

In 2008 Games Workshop (GW) released “Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning”, which is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) where you play a character in the high fantasy version of Warhammer. I have personally never played it, however I have heard it’s a pretty fun game, and it does some things better than existing MMO’s. The big problem is that it took place in the high fantasy Warhammer, which is basically the same setting at World of Warcraft, and WoW was already a massive success. WoW has put other MMO’s out of business, so to release something that is basically the same is a huge mistake.

On top of that the fantasy setting has been done to death (Did anyone even play Conan?). Had GW actually wanted to have a successful MMO without having to even really deal with WoW all they needed to do was set it in the 40k universe, which would make it scifi, and a scifi MMO is something players have been wanting for years (Yes I know there is EVE, but EVE is EVE and not part of this discussion). There is a lot of basic overlap between the fantasy setting for WR and the scifi setting so I don’t think it would have been that big of a deal to make the scifi one. If I had to guess, I would bet that GW was too scared to try something that was new and wanted to stay in the safe realm of MMO settings that had been done already, neglecting the fact that if they hads set the Warhammer MMO in space, they could have created something to actually compete with WoW rather than just something for bored WoW 80s to try out for a couple weeks and then go back over to WoW when they get sick of playing yet another fantasy MMO.

Dan Abnett, who has written comics for both DC and Marvel, as well several originals and, in my opinion, is the best author in the Black Library, which is the book publishing arm of Game Workshop. His books that take place in the 40k universe are awesome. They are well written, no fan fiction crap, with good characters, awesome action and really interesting plots (you can find them in hardcover). If you have not read any of his books I would highly recommend the “Ravenor: Omnibus”. It’s a killer scifi read. The Gaunt’s Ghosts books are awesome too. There are other authors in the Black Library, but the all pale in comparison to Abnett.

Now here is my big gripe with the movie; it’s not going to be based on a work by Abnett, so the best we can hope for is that the CGI will be cool and watching Orc and Space Marines kick the crap out of each other will be entertaining. The movie will go straight to DVD which says to me that only a very small amount of people will ever see it. Currently, I imagine it will end up on my Netflix queue. This is a damn shame. If the movie was going to be adapted from an Abnett novel with Abnett doing the adaptation you could have a blockbuster! The movie could be billed as an action scifi and depending on the choice of work, horror. The scifi movie genre has been pretty stale and lacking anything new and Warhammer 40k has everything required to create an awesome movie that would appeal to current fans of 40k and the main stream public. A few years ago I would have hesitated to say that. However, since both DC and Marvel have turned their works into movies, some of which have been good, and the general public sees those; you could definitely get people into see a 40k movie especially if it was well written, and based on a solid story.

Of course the actual movie that is in the works is not going to be nearly as cool as it could be. Rather, the movie is going to just be Space Marines versus Orcs. This basically means that no one will see this movie and, once again, Warhammer’s potential is being squandered.
This is totally my opinion, maybe the movie will be cool, and maybe there are loads of problems with having an Abnett’s based movie or a 40k MMO, but I am going to issue a challenge to Games Workshop to “do something new, unique and challenging with your 40k IP.” And please try to do it before Star Craft II comes out! Now, I would suggest you go take a shower and wash all the Cheetos dust off.

Rule 4: Double Tap

2009-10-05T01:45:00.003-04:00

That’s actually good advice no matter who you’re shooting at. If John McClane had double tapped Karl in Die Hard, he wouldn’t have come back at the end and pointed that gun at Holly. But I digress.

Zombieland is actually Number 1 at the box office with $25,000,000 this weekend and it deserves it. I checked the flick out Friday night and it was an all around fun time.

Jesse Eisenberg plays “Columbus” – who I guess you could call the hero of our tale. Columbus isn’t his real name, though. We never learn his real name because when he runs into Woody Harrelson’s character “Tallahassee” they insist on using only their destinations to identify themselves instead of names. Columbus is one of the only survivors of a worldwide human transmittable mad cow disease epidemic that turns people into zombies. Columbus meets Tallahassee on an abandoned highway and they decided to go it together if only for a little while. The two make an unlikely pair, but actually kick a little zombie ass together.

Columbus is on his way his parents home in Ohio to see if they survived although he admits he has never been that close to them. He learned of the outbreak early on when his hot, female next door neighbor turns and attacks him. So he forms a set of rules for himself and hits the road with a wheeled suitcase and a double barreled shotgun. He has 32 rules but we only learn a handful of them on screen.

Rule 1: Cardio – The undead in this flick can run, so you need to be able too as well. The first people taken out were the fatties and this has made me hit the treadmill at the gym even harder.

Rule 2: Beware of Bathrooms – When else are you at your most vulnerable?

Rule 3: Seatbelts – Can save your life in a normal world but in Zombieland getting tossed through a windshield may not kill you but it makes you helpless for when they feeding frenzy comes.

Rule 4: Double Tap- Don’t be stingy with your ammo. After you knock a zombie down with the first shot, put one more in their head to be sure.

Rule 17: Don’t be a Hero – Unless the only girl your age left alive in Zombieland is in danger… Then be the biggest fucking hero you can be!!

Rule 31: Check the Backseat – Columbus writes this rule the first time we meet him on screen.

Rule 32: Enjoy the Little Things – Tallahassee teaches this to him when he takes out his frustration on an abandoned SUV with a crowbar.

Columbus’ traveling partner is Tallahassee - a man who may not like Zombieland, but he’s going to kick a little ass and take a few names as long as he’s in it. Oh and he’s looking for the last Twinkie in the world. He says it will remind him of an easier, simpler time.

Woody Harrelson really sells the character to you. After all, he assaulted a photographer at an airport claiming he was still in character and thought the photog was a zombie. There’s even a moment when Tallahassee’s hatred of the zombies is explained and while it could have come off a little cheesy, you buy it. I also identify with Tallahassee when he says "My mother always told me, one day, I'd be good at something. I bet she never thought that thing would be zombie killing."

Along the way the two pick up Wichita (played by Emma Stone) and Little Rock (played by Abigail Breslin) two sisters who have heard that the “Pacific Playland” amusement park is zombie free. Actually "pick up" is too nice a term – "get fucked over by" is more like it.

Why is this flick so good? Because they clearly spent a few million dollars on a B movie and didn’t care. It’s junk food for your brain – good in small doses so the 88 minute runs time is perfect. There’s just enough character development to keep it from being totally devoid of heart but the focus is obviously the zombie kills. Just check out the trailer below for the Zombie Kill of the Week. Also, there is an A list celebrity cameo that will have you laughing so hard at certain points that it will be hard to breathe.

I’m Batman!

2009-10-01T23:52:00.002-04:00

No, I’m not really Batman… and neither is the crazy Swedish guy that spent $1 million on building his own replica Batmobile.

That’s right, some Swedish guy’s milkshake tastes better than yours! Even though it’s a replica of the original 1989 film Batmobile that’s still pretty awesome. Apparently this baby was built on the body of a 1973 Lincoln Continental and is packed full of awesome gadgets.

Check out this video.

This Batmobile packs no firepower that we know of but it does have GPS navigation, voice recognition, a DVD player, a plasma TV and rearview cameras.

Still, I think there are better ways to spend $1 million. Didn’t Indonesia lose a few people and buildings recently? Maybe you can hawk the ride and send them some aid or something. Or at least up grade to the Tumbler.

Its not nice to spread rumors

2009-09-30T16:03:00.002-04:00

This will be quick and since I am not feeling particularly inspired right now it might suck, but let me tell you why I could care less about these Apple tablet rumors.

Personally I see almost no need for the existence of a tablet Apple or otherwise. The tablets occupied a technology space that is somewhere between a phone and a netbook, basically it would be for things that are a little too hard to do on a cell phone screen but not complex enough to require a netbook.
Most smart phones are capable of GPS, however the small screen on the phone makes it hard to both look at and drive at the same time, so having a larger screen like you could on a tablet could be useful here except there are already a number of cheaper products that exist for the purpose of being GPS devices to use while driving, so even that space is filled.
A tablet is too big to fit in your pocket so it’s not like it would be easy to transport, like a phone is, and if you are going to carry a bag around with you then you might as well put a netbook in that bag. I fail to see anywhere that the tablet would be useful that is not already populated by a better product. The only real use I can think of for a tablet would be to pretend you are in Star Trek; those dudes are always carrying around tablet type devices.
This is the last time I will discuss the Apple Tablet here (Ryan still can, but I just won’t read the post), and for that matter till I see a tablet I would love I will not write any more entries about them (again this only pertains to me, the tablet hater), and I would request the rest of the tech world stop giving press to the Apple tablet until such a time as it actually exists. Didn’t you learn anything as a kid? It’s not nice to spread rumors.

Well... I'm moving to Korea.

2009-09-30T00:19:00.006-04:00

I would rather jump off a cliff than depend on my cell phone's camera for taking pictures. Which is unfortunate because I use my BlackBerry Storm for almost everything else. Let's ignore the fact that the BlackBerry Storm is inferior to the iPhone in many ways... yeah yeah yeah, I get it. I can basically use my phone for everything I could need during the day. In addition to using the the web surfing, memo, email, calendar and calculator functions for work, the voice recorder is actually far better than the $40 digital recorder I used to use for taking notes. Plus I can file the recordings on my computer or email them to myself or others.

So two of my most important needs as a journalist are met, mobile web and a recorder. Now if I could just get a decent camera on it, I could carry one device in my pocket all day. And that's why I'm moving to Korea, because this 12 megapixel, 3x optical zoom Samsung phone is only going to be available there.

See ya America, you just do not fulfill my cellphone needs any more. Yeah sure the freedom, culture, entertainment and language are all better suited for me but come on.... it's got three times optical zoom!!!

Here's what this baby also comes tricked out with:
* Wi-Fi
* GPS
* Bluetooth
* 4GB of on board memory
* microSD slot that allows expansion up to 32 GB
* 3.3 inch, 800x480 touchscreen
* 1,280x 720 video

Take a look at that shutter button, those zoom buttons, the flash and shooting mode dial! Throw a little 3G on this baby and I'll think about marrying it. I would still want to see some sample pics before I quit my job and tell the people I work with what I really think... I'm talking to you Gail! The true test for a camera is always the size and quality of the sensor. Case in point, my old Nikon D1H has a 2.1 megapixel sensor in it. My Sanyo Xacti video camera has a 7.1 megapixel still photo sensor in it. The quality difference could not be greater, especially in low light. Nikon wins it hands down there. It ain't all in the megapixels, it's in the sensors. But I would like to think the good people at Samsung Korea have thought of this.

This is something we need to see more of in this country, cameras that incidentally act as phones. I get the feeling that most people don't give a crap about the exact phone they have as long as it performs multiple functions for them and keeps them connected their peeps or tweeps or whatever the hell the kids say these days Anyway, the days of weighted down pockets are through, onward came the cellphones that act as (good) cameras. And if you're interested, there's Wired's list of the five gadgets cell phones killed. Oh and here are seven more. Until next time, An-nyeong Hi-gye-se-yo!

More MMS Fun, this time with law suits

2009-09-28T16:28:00.009-04:00

I have a couple of close friends that have the iPhone on AT&T and when I heard the update to allow them access to MMS was available, I pressured them to connect to iTunes and download the update. After each of them had preformed the update, I tried to send them a picture via picture messaging on my non-smart phone. I have seen the screen shots of what the MMS is supposed to look like on the iPhone text messaging layout, and I expected to see the picture of the creepy doll

in between the messages I had already sent. Neither of them got it! I sent it! According to my phone it went out. I waited untill the next day and still it had not shown up. On top of that they didn’t even get the dumb link iPhone users used to get when they received a picture. It just never showed up on the phones. Maybe this is an example of the craptastic service that AT&T is notorious for providing. I knew that the MMS would cause some network issues, but never actually delivering the picture is crazy. On top of that AT&T is actually supposed to be the best provider in Boston (where I live).

Even crazier than the picture not showing up is this article. I guess people are always looking for a quick buck, and suing is a really easy way to do that. But give me a break. Suing AT&T because they rolled out MMS at the end of September rather then the “end of the summer” which depending on who you ask could be several different dates.

I have always held that that the Solstice and the Equinox mark the ends or beginning of new seasons, and according to Wikipedia the equinox for the fall occurred on September 22, which is the Tuesday before the actual release of MMS. For me, Friday is a more dramatic day of the week than Tuesday, so if I was going to release something around September 22nd and I wanted the release to be dramatic I would wait until Friday too, I mean what’s three more days, really when people have been waiting years.

Now a case could be made that the end of summer and the beginning of fall is Labor Day, which this year was on September 7th. September 7th to September 25th is a pretty decent time difference, most of the month, and if you are using Labor Day as the day where summer ends and fall begins then yeah MMS was kinda late. Labor day is the first Monday in September so it does not even fall on a particular date, and as far I care it’s pretty arbitrary to be used as a deadline for anything since it’s something that is set by people. Someone picked it to be the first Monday in September - there is no science or anything like that for why it is that day.

Again, for my money I am going to pick the date that has science behind it, which is the equinox (you can read more about it the link above). The equinox affects everyone on Earth where as Labor Day is a US.. holiday. AT&T is worldwide so why should they be constrained by something that is so regional? If the they are using the equinox as their measure of the “end of summer” than they are on the money and not really late at all. In that case this kid is a jerk, and I hope the judge throws the case out, actually I hope the judge throws the case out either way.

Geek Squad thinks you're stupid and they’re willing to charge you to prove it.

2009-09-27T22:55:00.004-04:00

Now, perhaps it is not right to make fun of what Best Buy’s Geek Squad does. After all, there are still a lot of people out there that need help with the simpler things that come with the world of computers and gadgets. I will also take this opportunity to say that as a man who lives in the middle of technological nowhere, Best Buy does offer a good range of stuff at pretty decent prices. However, that doesn’t get them off the hook for a lot of the BS services Geek Squad tries to charge for that are so simple children can do them - and in many households they do.

Exhibit A: Over a year ago, Best Buy got the option to sell the iPhone 3G for standard Apple prices. However, Best Buy needed a way to get at your wallet somehow… what were they to do? How about force you to buy an unnecessary and expensive accessories pack ranging in price from $106-$234. They make you buy that and FOR FREE they’ll activate the phone and setup one e-mail address with it. Read the fine print.

Now, they’re REQUIRED to setup the phone for you and at an Apple store, the e-mail setup is a free courtesy- plus it’s very easy to sync an e-mail account with either an iPhone or iPod touch. So basically for at LEAST $104 you get services that are free elsewhere or easy to do yourself.

Exhibit B: Geek Squad will rip CDs to your computer for only $1 per disc. Ok, it’s not ten years ago. There’s no excuse for not knowing how to rip a CD to your computer. I ripped my entire CD collection to my Dell desktop during my first year of college back in 2002. And I was a technologically illiterate 18-year-old back then. However, I do remember it being an ordeal to upload the tracks and then rename them all. BUT, I was using a computer that is comparatively slow for today’s standards and I was using an ancient version of Windows Media Player to do it. So I decided to conduct a little experiment using today’s technology, the same technology Geek Squad is claiming is too hard for you, a moron, to use.

I found a stray CD and tossed it into the drive on my XPS while iTunes was open. iTunes immediately brought up a prompt asking if I would like to rip it. I clicked one… ONE… button and all 16 tracks were uploaded in 4 minutes. Actually, it may have been less than that because I got up and made a sandwich and when I came back, 4 minutes had elapsed and it was done. If you’re deciding to upload CDs, odds are you want to go digital for use with your MP3 player and that means, odds are, you have iTunes. Do not pay Best Buy for what will take you MAYBE a couple hours depending on the size of your CD library.

Exhibit C: Geek Squad will setup your PlayStation 3 at your home for just under half of what it cost you to buy the base hardware.

That’s right, for only $130, Best Buy will come to your home and plug in three wires, yellow, red and white. Or one wire if you have an HDMI television. But wait, I stand corrected. They will also download and install the latest firmware updates – you know, that thing that happens nearly automatically anyway. And they’ll also setup parental controls and one online gaming account . So they’ll basically follow the on-screen prompts like you would do yourself.A PlayStation 3 costs $300 by the way.

Now, there’s a lot more deranged things Best Buy will try to charge you for so I’ll go quickly through them. For anywhere from $15 to $130 they will show you how to use your MP3 player and/or Bluetooth headset in your car. For anywhere from $50 to $70 they will show you how to use e-mail. Yeah, that’s reasonable. And what do they mean by “connect an existing, active e-mail account to computer”? Are they going to show you how to open an internet browser and go to Google, Yahoo!, Hotmail or AOL or something? Who do they think will fall for that “service”? My grandmother? Ha Ha! Trick question! My grandmother doesn’t even know what a “Best Buy” is! Last but certainly not least is this little gem. For $150 PER HOUR they will come to your house and show you how to do things like use the internet, give you a run down on “digital photo, digital video, digital music”, give you a brief tutorial on how to use your iPod or rip CDs (no word if you have to send them $1 every time you do it on your own).

The best part is they make a point at the bottom to say “Training Services EXCLUDES teaching how to remove viruses or spyware and any other proprietary Geek Squad information.” Basically, they don’t want you to be too independent, because then you wouldn’t pay them shit tons of cash to have them do simple things. I hear the next service they’re going to offer includes hitting you on the head with a ball peen hammer until you forget how to tie your shoes and then they charge you $75 to come into your home and tie them for you. That’s $75 PER SHOE TYING by the way. How to tie your shoes is proprietary Geek Squad information after all.

So technologically impaired people out there (like my Dad who still insists I can melt a hard drive by using a music downloading service) I encourage you all to find some 19-year-old kid on your street - or better yet your grandchild - and pay them $20 to teach you what you want to know. Also, don’t blame/assault the Geek Squad, they do do some good work for people that can’t do it themselves and I’m sure they don’t set the policy. The corporate fat cats do. So blame/assault them.

I burn, I pine, I perish...

2009-09-25T20:08:00.007-04:00

While I love my new Dell Studio XPS 16, there are some outrageously excessive laptops stuffed with awesomeness. Now, much like Alienware's products which start at $1,500, they seem awesome but are expensive and unlike Alienware, not as customizable. The first drool educing laptop is the GScreen Spacebook from a company called (believe it or not) GSCREEN. Now the base model is a 15.4 inch "Spacebook"(named so because it was recovered from the Roswell crash or something), it weighs in at a slightly chubby 8.7 pounds, Intel Core 2 Duo Processor P8700 2.53 GHz, 3 MB L2 cache, 1066 MHz FSB, DDR2 800 MHz SDRAM with expansion up to 4 GB, 250 GB SATA hard drive, 3 USB 2.0 ports, CD/DVD burner and 6-in-1 media card reader and there's something else....

Oh that's right, IT'S GOT TWO SLIDING SCREENS!!! I don't have any children yet but I would be willing to issue an IOU for the first born if GScreen is willing to send Casual Geekery one for free for us to test drive. I promise we have a lot more followers than that one listed. We've... been having problems... with the tubes.

Why is this awesome: It has two 15-inch screens. It's perfect for photographers, graphic artists, video editors, really anyone that wants to multitask. Or just people who want have Hulu open to while they also play Halo. OK, so I can't explain why it's so awesome, it just is. Well the $3,000 price tag is not so awesome but that may be lower when it ships.

Next up, Intel's concept notebook that really tries to one up the GScreen by having not one, not two, not three but four screens!

And three of them are touchscreens! Suck on that GScreen! I kid, I'd actually rather have the GScreen but I can see why these are both awesome. Check out CNET's videos about it.

Why this is awesome: The three screens would be ideal for multitasking you don't need a full screen for like swishing through your iTunes albums to change songs without dropping your main screen, arranging your favorite widgets or apps to make them readily available, or apparently you can also use them for multi-touch capabilities.

I imagine this is what we'll start to see more and more of in the future. Multiple screens will become common place much the same way built-in web cams have become in the last couple years. Or maybe they'll stay regulated to the odd ball offerings like the fingerprint scanners have kinda been.

Last on the list is Lenovo's ThinkPad W700ds with it's flip out 10-inch screen. Not bad at all for a $1,149 base price.

This would be more my speed if I was going to purchase a multi-screen laptop. Or I could spend $149 at ThinkGeek.com and get essentially the same thing.

Which I think I'll do the next time I have some cash.

finally the Missing Messaging Services comes to the iphone (see what I did with the capitalization there?)

2009-09-25T15:09:00.003-04:00

Finally the iPhone, which is an amazing piece of technology, has caught up with phones from the early 2000s. It can now send pictures and videos… woooo… Ok it has a ton of other awesome features, but till today (September 25, 2009) whenever a non-iPhone user sent a picture text message the iPhone user was given a really hard to use link to go to and retrieve the picture, so basically no iPhone user has ever seen any pictures sent to them.

AT&T claims that they were nervous that the iPhone users would send loads of pictures to everyone and it would make the already unreliable network more unreliable. I have heard, though never seen, that the iPhone is practically unusable in places like the Bay Area and NY City where there are a really high concentrations of iPhones. Ok maybe they have a point. If the current iPhone users basically lock up the network with their current use and features, then adding more features will probably cause even more issues, now that they are sending all those pictures they take with the built in camera to everyone in their contact lists.

The iPhone has built in email and its possible to send pictures via email, which would be a great alternative to MMS if everyone out there also had an emailing phone. This is not always the case - either the phone has no email at all or the email is not really that accessible, like it is on my Verizon Voyager. So using the practically ancient technology called MMS - which most phones have had access too since its launch in March of 2002 - makes more sense, as it is basically standard.

The iPhone update came out today, and requires the owner to hook up their phone to iTunes and download the update. I am told it is small and should be quick. I am glad for this; finally my friends can see all those hilarious pictures I have wanted to send them. Let the drunken MMSing commence!

Max Brooks has my dream job

2009-09-25T08:37:00.007-04:00

Mel's offspring has offically cornered the market on writing anything he wants about zombies and having a publishing house buy it, sell it and make them both a shit ton of money. So I guess I should really concentrate on journalism. The odds of two guys getting that career are about the same as running into a real zombie.

For those of you that are living under a zombie rock, Max Brooks wrote a great satirical piece in 2003 called The Zombie Survival Guide. It's essentially a how-to manual for the average Joe when it comes to surviving the immanent zombie apocalypse.

While the guide was a success, apparently no one listened to its advice because - as we all know- The Zombie War brought us to the brink of extinction. If it weren't for the details of the Redeker Plan and the sheer balls displayed by the United States walking corpses may have been all that was left on the planet. And of course Brooks documented this all in his after action report, World War Z.

Now, Brooks has a new work coming out October 6 called The Zombie Survival Gudie: Recorded Attacks, a graphic novel that illustrates some of the more fantastical (and fictional) zombie encounters in history as first mentioned in the original survival guide. Check out this video preview of it.

The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks by Max Brooks from Crown Books on Vimeo.

Awesomeness incarnate! Check out the official web site for the first 21 pages of the book. It details a massive outbreak in Roman controlled Britain where a Roman Legion develops the first battle doctrine that is actually effective against the walking dead.

As a side note, here's some awesome art that represents the Battle of Yonkers from World War Z. Sorry, I forgot where I found it so there's not attribution.

Everyone send an apology card to Bryan Singer

2009-09-23T21:09:00.006-04:00

"Superman Returns" was not a great movie by any means but at least it didn't look like "The Hulk". It could have been a better movie but it was average for the superhero movies of the era. This was pre "The Dark Knight" after all.

But let's all thank our Lord and savior that Tim Burton's "Superman Lives" never saw the light of day. For those of you that are unfamiliar, back in the mid to late 90s, Kevin Smith was offered re-write work at Warner Brothers and found a copy of their new Superman script. After he finished bashing the hell out of it to numerous executives they let him write his own version. Here's how it went down in Smith's own words.

As he said, based on his treatment of the script Tim Burton signed on to direct and Nicholas Cage signed on to star. The movie fell apart and it's a good thing. THIS is what Cage would have looked like as the Man of Steel.

Words actually fail me. Max Payne actually looks good by comparison. Let's ignore the Eric Draven hair, the washed out look of the photo and the fact that Cage looks like he's higher than your average Phish fan on tour. That leaves the suit. WHAT THE HELL IS WITH THAT?!?! Is that really what the '90s were like? Would that have passed muster a decade ago? I thought I remembered the '90s pretty well and while there was a problem with neon in the beginning and flannel in the middle, I don't remember ever being in a mindset where that would have been acceptable.

Plus, I know it's just a wardrobe test photo but that is a really bad quality photo. To put it into perspective, this was a MAJOR STUDIO wardrobe test being done for what was hoped to be a blockbuster summer movie.

And this is what actor Thomas Jane PERSONALLY PAID FOR when he heard there might be a Johan Hex movie.

Need I say more?

Oh and in case you're wondering, a small snippet of Kevin Smith's draft did make it into "Superman Returns". It's the part where Superman flies Lois Lane into the stratosphere to tell her that he hears people calling out for help every day and it's hard not to be Superman. Apparently, Smith had set the scene on the top of Mt. Rushmore. and the dialog was very different. More about their personal relationship than his need to be a hero. You can check out all of Smith's script here.

Max Payne's journey into the night conitnues

2009-09-23T00:59:00.007-04:00

Some of the best memories of my college years involved gathering around the PS2 with good friends and taking turns blowing away wave after wave of bad guys while chomping pain killers and using "bullet time" to look really cool doing it. Those were the days of playing Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne.

The story of a DEA agent framed for murder and sent on the run was set to comic book-style Noir cut scenes where Max made insane, verbose and awesome lines like "Gognitti ran out of steam in a dead end valley with steam boiling out of the sewer grates, like all the fires of hell were burning high beneath us... It was shakedown time"

The sequel was just as awesome though slightly the same as the first, Max, now back on the NYPD, finds out what rock bottom really is. But that was all the way back in 2003. After the game's end credits we were promised "Max Payne's journey into the night will continue." But it never came... Until Now!!!

Rockstar Games has finally announced Max Payne 3 but there's a slight problem. This was Max the first time we saw him, a strung out undercover agent with a dead wife and baby.

And this was him in the second game. A slightly chubbier, tireder, alcohol detective with no real reason to live except for a femme fatale who's gunning for him.

Now this is Max 12 years later, working in private security in Brazil and looking like he finally found true rock bottom.

Kudos Max, it only took you the better part of two decades to reach the end of your rope!

Holy hell they decided to go in a bold direction with this new game! They changed up Max's look dramatically, removed him from the noir capital of the world, New York City, and judging from the screen shots on the official web site, have decided to set the game during the day- something that didn't happen once in the first two.

While I have my reservations I'll probably give the PC version a try when it comes out next year. After all, I've been waiting six years to see if Max finally has one fucking day of happiness in his miserable life. What's another few months?

Another Reason I Hate Peta

2009-09-22T11:26:00.007-04:00

Is PETA f-n serious with this article.

I like cute cuddly animals and stuff, and I am not a super big fan of the horrible abuses that humans sometimes put animals through in the name of progress, but PETA is doing it all wrong cause now every time i read something about them it makes me want to club baby seals.

How about this shit? Are you kidding me!?
1) PETA has never been to a Phish show or else they would have noticed the malnourished dogs wandering around the lot.
2) The name is terrible! I love Phish and I think I would quit if they changed their names to Sea Kittens, there is nothing shred worthy in that name

PETA stop messing with my band and get out of my tech news!

The "shrink effect"

2009-09-22T10:07:00.006-04:00

Caution: this is a rant, and as with many of my rants it may contain run- on sentences, and tenuous logic. You have been warned!!

I have no idea if this is a real notion or if it already has a name, but I am going to call it the “shrink effect”. The “shrink effect” is the notion that technology is merging together. Let me give you an example. In the world of instant messaging there is AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook, Gchat, Skype, and I am sure I am missing a couple of big ones, but it really does not matter to my point.

If everyone you communicate with was only on one of these than this would not matter, but the fact is that most people have their friends spread out through at least a couple of these applications. I, personally, am only on Gchat and therefore only talk to people on Gchat (but I am different). I do this because I like the Gchat interface within Gmail and since I am logged in to Gmail all day it makes sense to use the chat feature. I have friends that still use AIM, and some people I used to play WoW with all used MSN. I am a stick-in-the-mud and only talk to people on Gchat. However, people that want to talk to their friends across the different networks can download third party software that will connect all these different chats; for instance Pigden.

Pigden allows you to log into all your different chat accounts and have them all in the same place, so you don’t need to run many different apps to converse with your friends. Pigden is an example of the “shrinking effect." With Pigden, there is one place to chat with everyone, despite the fact that they are actually on different services.

Another example is Tweetdeck, the third party Twitter application. With Tweetdeck you can use your Twitter account, but you can also have it interface with Facebook, allowing you to send your status updates to both through the single interface. Again we are shrinking two services down to one.

I think that this notion of shrinking is going to continue. We will see it not just in terms of chat, but for internet log in. OpenID is an example of this. It allows you to log into it and have your log in be used in several places on the internet. Logging into Google gives you access to a ton of personalized functionality like your documents, your blogs, your email, your reader, your news, etc. With one log in, I get access to a ton of functionality and I can interact with other peoples' Google functionality with their own ID. I can comment on their blogs, share reader items and documents with them all. Facebook wants to be this too; this is why they have instant messaging as well as voice chat which is on the way. In Facebook’s case, they want to be the one-stop-shop for all your social interaction. I would not be surprised if Facebook implemented a way to blog and have that blog available to yours friends. With a Facebook log in, you have access to the whole Facebook framework where you are already connected to your friends and family. If everyone is on Facebook already and Facebook had instant messaging and voice chat with one log in, you are now connected to and can interact seamlessly with those people. You don’t have to give out separate user names for different applications in order to have people interact with you, no longer will you need to put your AIM name into Facebook for people to message you - they can just do it through Facebook. While I think that Facebook is currently too bloated (see my other entries about that) they are continuously improving their interface.

Google already has a really good integration and has been moving towards more social features, but it does not have the social connectivity that Facebook already has. Even if they did implement something like this, Facebook already has the market share. I don’t think that this will be a sudden thing, but one day we will wake up and realized that all our interactions are taking place in one place rather than through several different mediums, and Facebook want to be this place.

Another example of the "shrink effect" is Pay Pal. Pay Pal wants to be the one place for all your online financial transactions. The idea is that with a Pay Pal account, you only need one log in to buy, or sell online. I think that this is the way to go, however, it requires that all the online sellers get in bed with Pay Pal. Google has something like this too. Whichever company is able to make themselves the fully integrated method of payment online will have a huge market place and it will be very hard for other companies to infiltrate the space. (Also, Hey newspaper industry! Incorporate yourselves with Pay Pal and you can make micro payment work, but you all need to be on board!)

This entry is a lot of me kind of rambling, and why not? That’s what I do, but something to just note here is that there will always be new things popping up all the time. However, these will be used by the fringes and will not have the same level of exposure to the masses (I mean the masses thing that the internet is the Internet Explorer icon). Innovation will continue but I expect that these innovations will start out as things unto themselves and will then be incorporated by the big players as they take on popularity. For instance, I think that Twitter will eventually be bought and integrated into either Facebook or Google. I am not sure what the end result of that integration would be, but I can see this happening and, hell, Facebook has already made their Status very Twitter like. I even see people @replying to each other on Facebook. Basically, the big players in social media will win by being a one-stop-shop for everything. A place where you can go and be fully integrated with everything you need to communicate and live online.

Talking face...book

2009-09-22T09:41:00.009-04:00

Here I go again with another entry about Facebook. This time I am writing about the voice chat they are adding via a browser plug-in. The technology for this is coming from a Boston based company (which is awesome!) called Vivox.

I have never heard of them, but I guess they also make voice chat for Second Life and EVE online, neither of which I have ever played but both have a decent following, so there must be tons of people out there that regularly use their service. Adding this to Facebook makes some sense. Basically Facebook is taking the next step to make itself a totally integral part of your life. Now you can not only stalk your friends and acquaintances, waste lots of time playing Mafia wars, and comparing which 80’s icons you best match to your friends - you can do it all while actually talking to the person!

A while back Facebook rolled out its own chat feature which was basically a way to instant message your friends who are logged into Facebook too. I never use this feature and from what people have said, it never really worked all that well. I think that the voice chat will follow suit. It’s an interesting thing to add to Facebook but in the end it will not be all that revolutionary or even useful. I am sure some people will use it, it does make more sense that eBay buying Skype, however, because at least Facebook is meant to be a social experience.

There has been some speculation that this would cause people to strip down their friend list so that casual acquaintances don't try to voice chat them. I honestly don’t think that this will be the case, basically because this works both ways. For example I have a bunch of people in my friends list that I do not want to talk to on the phone or via a voice chat because I am not friends with these people enough to want to really talk to them. If you know me, you know that I don’t even really like talking on the phone to people I do like so I will never start a voice chat with any of them. Now this works in reverse too, I am sure I am on some peoples' friends list and they don’t want to talk to me, so they never will. Time is a premium in our society, why would people waste it talking on voice chat to people they don’t really care to talk to anyway? I think that our friend lists will remain more or less the same and this new feature will have very little impact (especially since I will only be logging into Facebook Lite).

In conclusion I think it’s interesting that Facebook added this, I am planning another entry that will go into detail about this, but over all I don’t think the voice chat will have much of an impact on Facebook users at all… at least not now.

A Jedi shall know not anger, nor fear, nor low, low prices

2009-09-18T22:58:00.002-04:00

Now you may all know that a bunch of crazy mofos in Britain tried to get “Jedi” made into an actual religion a few years back. Opinion is split on whether or not it became official but the “founder” of the church, 23-year-old Daniel Jones, was booted out of a supermarket in Bangor, North Wales according to the UK Daily Mail.

It seems Jones, also know as Jedi Knight Morda Hehol (sigh), was tossed from the store for refusing to remove the Jedi robe hood from his head. Apparently the Tesco supermarket forbids wearing things on the head because it is run by fascists or Sith Lords or something and asked Morda to leave without getting his daily dose of Lucky Charms.

This is the actual Tesco extra in question.

Jones claims he was “emotionally humiliated” by the incident but something tells me that if he claims he is a Jedi Knight and walks around all day in a Jedi robe, this is not the first time that he has been humiliated in public. .

Despite the fact that this guy is a total freaking moron for getting this bent out of shape, I WAS ready to blast the supermarket for making him take off the hood in their store. It just goes to show you the little freedoms we take for granted in the States. A Jedi in a Wal-Mart wouldn’t have attracted a second glance in the US. Even if he were asked to take it off, the employee would have gotten a Constitutionally protected “Fuck You!” in response.

I say WAS ready to because I took back everything when I read the Tesco spokesperson’s comeback to Jones’ claims of religious discrimination. He said “[Jones] hasn't been banned. Jedis are very welcome to shop in our stores although we would ask them to remove their hoods. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Luke Skywalker all appeared hoodless without ever going over to the Dark Side and we are only aware of the Emperor as one who never removed his hood. If Jedi walk around our stores with their hoods on, they'll miss lots of special offers.”

That’s the best defense ever!! They played right along with this nut job’s delusion and made a great point. Jones claimed that Jedi doctrine says you must cover your head while in public but HE WROTE THE FRIGGING DOCTURINE WHEN HE FOUNDED THE CHURCH! And he didn’t even pay close attention to the movies before he wrote it.

Daniel Jones, right, at a Jedi religious service in Holyhead, North Wales.

And dude, if you’re reading this (which you probably aren’t) relax. You can claim Jedi is a real religion all you want but that doesn't mean you get the same respect as a Muslim headscarf. I think that’s a ridiculous religious rule as well but at least it comes from a real religion. Until you can build and wield a lightsaber and use the Jedi mind trick, you get no sympathy from me.

This may be the weirdest question I ever ask you…

2009-09-17T19:15:00.002-04:00

Have you ever wanted to smell like Cthulhu? I didn’t think so. In fact, ever since I read The Call of Cthulhu in college I’ve woken up in a cold sweat several times hoping I never find out what the monster smells like let alone hoping I never get close enough to have its musky, manly scent left on me.

BUT…. if you are not like me, you can now smell like the indescribable horror from beyond thanks to the good people at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.

As part of their “A Picnic in Arkham” collection, the Black Phoenix people have culled together a number of fragrances inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft and his crazy ass mind.

That’s right boys and girls, it’s a “creeping, wet, slithering scent, dripping with seaweed, oceanic plants and dark unfathomable waters.”

Now Black Phoenix has a variety of scents from the weird annals of fiction and mysticism but the one that actually attracted me was the Hellboy Collection. Hellboy smells like “aftershave, candy wrappers, brimstone and cat”? Hell yes I want to smell like that!! The only problem I have with it is I don’t think anyone wants to smell like Abe Sapien… dude eats rotten eggs. That’s all I’m sayin’.

As long as we still got guns, we’re gonna fight!

2009-09-17T18:49:00.003-04:00

Christmas is coming early for me this year, November 17 to be exact, the day that Left 4 Dead 2 drops.

For years and years I have loved killing zombies in video games because, frankly, they scare the hell out of me. While the Resident Evil games managed to hold me over for a while, I got tired of having to find three keys, two jewels and a crest to get into another area with even more traps and puzzles and about 100 zombies and me with only 13 rounds left. That’s why I was uber psyched when Left 4 Dead came out last year and all you had to do was shoot and survive. While the monsters in L4D aren’t exactly zombies but mutated rabies infected humans a la 28 Days Later, it’s all the same to me.

Now, L4D2 carries on a number of similar elements to the original game: from four immune survivors to multiple hour or so long missions modeled as movies to “common infected” and “special infected”. But there’s a couple of changes, including one you may notice in this trailer.

That’s right… melee weapons! I personally can’t wait to use the chainsaw because Dead Rising didn’t do it for me in the melee weapons department. I think it is because the focus wasn’t so much on the weapons and the damage they can do as the wide variety of them.

Set a few weeks after the original game and in New Orleans, this time our heroes are Coach: a high school football coach. Rochelle: a local TV news reporter. Ellis: a mechanic and Nick: a gambler and conman.

The game keeps the AI Director that changes up game play every time you log in to keep it fresh and continues the awesome feature of each mission being it’s own movie complete with poster during the load screen.

In addition to the oldies but goldies, there are three new classes of “special infected”; The Charger which can plow survivors out of its way; The Spitter which projectile vomits corrosive phlegm at the survivors and The Jockey which jumps on your back and steers you toward other infected. There are also new common infected roaming around who got infected while wearing clothes that give them an advantage against the survivors. Those bitten in riot gear are more resistant to bullets and those who were in Haz Mat suits won’t catch fire.

Here Coach tries to fight a flame-retardant infected.

There are also a few new weapons and types of ammunition available including silenced machine guns and incendiary ammo. Check out the trailer for the new incendiary ammo.

Personally I’m not sure those would be practical in real life. As we’re told in the Zombie Survival Guide, flames don’t kill zombies, they just create flaming zombies that come straight at you.

Check out the game’s official web site for more info and screen shots. Oh and if you want to play the original L4D with me while we wait, I play under the name rphutton.

Technorati Tags: video games,zombies,horror

I like Hello Kitty Island Adventure a lot more than this…

2009-09-17T17:41:00.004-04:00

Ok, this is a couple years old but I just found it so I’m going pretend it’s brand new. Now, every fan of World of Warcraft has probably seen the South Park episode by now entitled “Make Love, Not Warcraft” in which the boys team up on the plains of Azeroth to defeat some nerd that has spent so much time playing WoW he now just goes around killing players and admins alike.

Enter Butters, the lovable rascal who desperately needs a hug from a stable parental figure. It turns out he doesn’t play WoW. Check out the clip at the 1:06 mark to see what I mean (but watch the whole thing if you want to see a good dig at the French).

Well, Hello Kitty Island Adventure does not really exist but when the episode first aired, it became a joke amongst my friends for when one of us didn’t like playing a certain video game and the rest did. They would be taunted with “go play Hello Kitty Island Adventure!” and then an insult that insinuated they were gay.

Well I was watching the episode recently now that Spence has finally talked me into playing WoW and I decided to punch Hello Kitty Island Adventure into Google and see what comes out and what do I find? Well WoW Interface has a download available to give you a Hello Kitty interface for the game!

While I will not be downloading it ever I’m sure someone wants this. At least one person wanted it because they took the time to program it. So now my friends and I can call each other gay while still playing WoW.

Technorati Tags: video games,WoW,South Park