Well, here I am, sitting in my mom’s living room (thanks, mom) waiting for Pep Boys to fix my car. I have been here since Saturday night.

I was going to Idaho to get my new job at DirecTV and was driving up the 580 freeway near Livermore when my car stalls in traffic. I’m not too worried at that point because I have never had a problem with this car, and I don’t expect it. Low expectations are a bitch, however.

I had it towed to the Pep Boys in San Leandro, and waited it out thinking it was an alternator problem. Nope. My timing belt slipped and it was just enough to eff up the car for the rest of the week. I am currently in the process of getting my cylinder head and valve guides replaced, a process that has basically taken my entire stake for the trip and living for the first month in Idaho. Good news is the car will be top notch for another 90,000 miles, at which point, yours truly will dutifully have the timing belt replaced again.

You see, this is all part of the scheduled maintenance process. If I had had this done before the trip, I would have saved a massive amount of time, money, stress and pressure. As it is, my mom has volunteered to take some of the burden off of me. At least I can get to Idaho and pay the phone bill.

Moral of the story kids, keep your car in good shape, especially the one you are still paying off.

Technorati Tags: car, dummy (me), kia

Just trying out the new MarsEdit, 3.0. This version supports WYSIWYG editing, custom pages in WordPress and other cool things. It may supplant Blogo for me, but I’ll have to give it the acid test. I have to get some new movie articles out as I said before in a previous post where I did no posting.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, MarsEdit, new stuff

Today, I turn 50. Nothing to see here, move along. I hope I can keep my youthful perspective. As Mohammed Ali said:

Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are.

Amen.

Technorati Tags: not a curmudgeon, Turning 50

This is as cool as you can get. If I get an iPad, this is the 1st $4.99 I’m spending. Just hope it’s a good news feed reader. The main article at TrekMovie.com has a video.

Earlier this week we reported that the much talked about “Captain’s Log” iPad application was pulled from Apple’s iTunes. Now this weekend a new Star Trek-ish application has been released called the “LCARS Internet Media Reader”.

link: New ‘LCARS’ iPad Application Released | TrekMovie.com

Technorati Tags: ipad, Trek stuff

Some of you are probably waiting for some new stuff. These are the posts I absolutely dread seeing on a blog, so here goes. I got dropped a little bombshell a couple of months ago that may make regular posts even more infrequent. Just as I was getting ramped up to do more movie reviews. I will have reviews of Kubrick’s AND Lyne’s Lolitas soon.

I have a new (used) black Macbook, a new (new) Google Nexus One and some other stuff going on that I plan on venting out here in the next few posts. I am still thinking about getting an iPad. I just tried on out. I haven’t been here in a while and I see we have some new members and new SPAM, so I will be taking care of those, probably this weekend. Take care til then.

Technorati Tags: lethargy, posting, posts

This is not going to be a post on how great the iPad will be. That I’ll reserve until I hold one in my hot little hands. No, it seems that the entire tech press has gone out of their way to proclaim the iPad a resounding failure or at least a wrong headed idea.

I don’t know about any of that. I watched Steve Jobs intro the device and one thing I noticed that maybe no one else did was that Steve was very low key in his actual use of the iPad. He described the iPad in superlatives because that’s his job, but when he used it he tried to convey the sense that surfing the ‘net on the iPad will be kind of mundane, almost as mundane as turning on a light, or picking up a remote and turning on the TV.

That’s the point.

I hang around with computer hobbyists. Most are proud that they can build a PC, or install and use Linux, etc. I read tech blogs and sites all day long. These are constantly reviewing things and giving out tips, tricks and other useful information to computer users. They are cognizant that the audience for their sites are the same as they are, so when they give advice, they expect the people reading it have a certain level of knowledge.

I am in tech support. I answer people’s calls about our product. We have a lot of customers and more signing up every day because we provide online backup and storage. People have a need for this, and for the vast majority of our customers, it works fine. I’ll give you a typical example of a call I take every day:

Me: Thanks for choosing <PRODUCT>. Steve speaking, how can I help you?
Customer: I see on my credit card statement that I’ve been charged $9.95 on the first, and then $12.54 on the fourth for your service. What are these for?
Me: Well, the charge on the first is your normal monthly renewal and the one on the fourth sounds like a quota overage. I’d like to check. Can I get your <PRODUCT> username or email please?
Customer: Well, there’s a problem right there, I don’t know my username. I don’t even know if <PRODUCT> is backing up my files.

The customer signed up, configured our software and walked away but didn’t read our terms on quota overages and they never expected that there would be a problem with “us backing up their stuff.” In reality, our system relies on the user to do most of the administration of their account to keep the costs low. That call could go either way at the point where I stopped. I’ll also cop to the fact that we set the expectations of the customer in the wrong way.

Apple has for years done the same thing. Computers are not easy to use, but they would like you to think that Mac OS X is the easiest computer OS out there, and it is for the vast majority of its customers. It isn’t dead easy however. Macs (and all computers, by the way) are complex machines with moving parts and even if the software works flawlessly, there’s no guarantee that any of it’s going to work reliably for the long haul. This is why hard drives are rated on a mean runtime until failure.

Steve Jobs knows this. He also knows that the technology is now almost in alignment with his dream of making computing as easy as toasting a bagel. If you look at the iPhone or iPod Touch, the iPad’s older siblings, you will notice a few things.

• Very few moving parts, namely the toggle switches and home button
• Only one I/O port (two, if you count the headphone jack)
• SIM card tray
• A solid state drive
• A camera
• Speaker and microphone
• Sealed battery compartment

All of the controls for applications and making calls (on the iPhone), except the home button are walled into the touchscreen, including the keyboard. This lessens confusion. The iPad has exactly the same configuration. Why get off a winner? The only things the iPad lacks are a camera, and the ability to make phone calls. So, charges that this is “just a large iPod Touch” may be valid. That’s only part of the story. There have been complaints leveled at the iPad’s bezel. That it’s too thick, and that it takes away the from the screen. There is a reason for this too.

Take a look at your iPhone and note the areas above and below the screen. The top houses the phone receiver, and the proximity and light sensors. The bottom has the home button, the mic and speaker. These locations are great places to grab to the phone so you don’t register a touch on the screen should it be active for some reason. Jony Ive, Apple’s senior vice president in charge of design, describes the iPad this way:

…there isn’t even a single orientation, there’s no up, there’s no down, there’s no right or wrong way of holding it…

This is why the bezel is the way it is, so you can flip it around and not register a touch or obscure something on the screen. Like, while you’re watching a movie lying down on the couch.

I got off on a tangent, but you get the idea.

The bottom line is, the iPad strips away all the layers of complexity from the computing experience. Is it easy to use? Dead easy, but you pay a price. For this, you have limited if any access to the device itself, so it is not “hackable” unless you know what you’re doing. You must install only applications that Apple has approved through its App Store screening process, and you are going to have to go to Apple to change out the battery and it will have a limited upgrade life.

For the vast majority of folks that will buy an iPad, these are actually benefits. For one thing, I don’t think you can point to a single virus caused by an iPhone app. Second, if your iPhone/Touch should lock up for some reason and it’s under warranty Apple will just replace your device no questions asked.

The question you’re probably asking yourselves now is, “Is Steve getting an iPad?” Yes, three in fact. One for me and one each for my wife and daughter. As a portable computer, it’s a no brainer. I asked myself pointedly what I did on my netbook that warranted my using it, and all I do on it is surf the ‘net, do email, write an occasional blog post and watch movies. That’s it. The iPad does all this better and costs a little more. I have a 160 GB hard drive that I am barely using 8 GB of, so 16 GB could be about right for me. I just haven’t decided if I want to go with AT&T’s data plan yet and wait the extra month for the 3G model.

The real bottom line for me; I want my wife and daughter to use their computers a little more, but I don’t want to go through the hassle of tech support every weekend. I would like to post to my blog and watch more movies, not swap out hard drives.

Technorati Tags: ipad, Tech, tech pundits

This is a quick test for WordTwit.

Technorati Tags: WordTwit

MLIGN Sense ROM

Hey, just a quick post from my G1. I am going to see if I can do most of my online stuff from Android this weekend. If I can, it will solidify my decision to maybe, sort-a-kinda think about getting a Google Nexus One. Maybe. Still in love with the iPhone, there’s just no 3G on it whilst I’m on TMO.

Technorati Tags: android, decisions decisions, iphone, Nexus One, Tech

Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule: ROBIN WOOD AND RIO BRAVO

In the town of Rio Bravo, Dude (“Borachón”; played by Dean Martin), the town drunk, enters a saloon wanting a drink. Joe Burdette (Claude Akins), seeing Dude eying his glass, throws a silver dollar into a spittoon to mock him. Just as Dude goes for the spittoon, Presidio County, Texas, Sheriff John T. Chance (John Wayne) kicks the spittoon away, looking at Dude with pity and disgust. As Chance turns to face Joe Burdette, Dude grabs a small piece of firewood and clubs Chance on the head, knocking him unconscious. Dude then starts toward Burdette, but two of his hired cow punchers grab Dude. Burdette starts to beat Dude with the two men holding him. A bystander grabs Burdette’s arm so he can’t swing on Dude again. Burdette draws his gun and shoots the bystander in the stomach. The close-up of Joe’s revolver discharging is the first close-up in the film. Burdette then leaves the saloon and heads for another one thinking that he can do no wrong.

In the second saloon, after Burdette has another drink, Sheriff Chance enters with his Winchester aimed at Burdette, to arrest him for the murder of the bystander. One of Burdette’s men then draws his Colt revolver on Chance and creates a stalemate. Dude enters behind two of Burdette’s men and then takes the revolver of the man standing in front of him and shoots the gun out of the hand of the Burdette man. Chance then whips Burdette across the face with the rifle, knocking him unconscious. Chance and Dude drag Burdette out of the saloon, headed for the jail.

Joe Burdette is the brother of a powerful rancher, Nathan Burdette (John Russell). The rancher’s men then quarantine the town in preparation to breaking Burdette out of jail. The only help Chance has are his deputies Dude and Stumpy (Walter Brennan), an old cripple. Pat Wheeler (Ward Bond), a wagoneer, enters town with a wagon load of supplies from Fort Worth. Tensions are further strained by the presence of a young gunslinger hired by Wheeler to guard his wagons, Colorado Ryan (Ricky Nelson), and the arrival of a mysterious woman, Feathers (Angie Dickinson), who becomes romantically involved with Chance.

• Quarantining Joe Burdette.
• Getting Dude sober.
• Chance and Feathers’ relationship.

I put them in their order of importance, as I believe Hawk’s would have treated them. Since this is the anti-High Noon, he would naturally have relegated Chance’s love for Feathers to the back burner. There are some situations where Feathers’ tries to wedge herself into the situation over Chance’s protestations. These scenes seem sexist on Chance’s part, but are actually common sense. Feathers never actually establishes herself as gun savvy. I think Feathers is one of the most interesting female characters in a Hawks film. In many important ways, she seems to be channeling Lauren Bacall from another great Hawks film, To Have and Have Not.

Also, in the vein of doing the opposite of High Noon, Chance doesn’t accept any offers of help. He gives the reason to Ward Bond’s character, Pat Wheeler:

Supposing I got ‘em. What’d I have? Some well-meaning amatuers, most of ‘em worried about their wives and kids. Burdette has 30 or 40 men, all professionals. Only thing they’re worried about is earning their pay. No, Pat. I’d just be giving them more targets to shoot at. A lot of people’d get hurt. Joe Burdette isn’t worth it. He isn’t worth one of them that’d get killed.

Good reasons. Moments like that are what makes Rio Bravo a great western. In fact, everything in Rio Bravo is nearly perfect. The pacing seems lackadaisical but the story moves ahead briskly, each event building on the one before. The dialog, as usual in a Hawks film, is brilliant, although he doesn’t use the device of overlapping dialog, which was a signature Hawks technique. All the main characters seem to have lives outside the film, a feat most movies today can’t seem to get straight. The set piece at the end of the film, the battle at the Burdette warehouse, is very exciting and is brilliantly photographed and edited.

The drawbacks to Rio Bravo aren’t in the film itself, but what it would spawn later. John Wayne would go on, except for a few films, to play this character in some equally great westerns such as The Sons of Katie Elder and Hawks’ own remake to Rio Bravo, El Dorado. Of course, The Duke made many more mediocre westerns in this period like The Cowboys, Chisum and Hawks’ third remake of Rio Bravo, Rio Lobo.

Rio Bravo is just fun. Everyone on screen seems to be having a good time and that becomes infectious. If you have never sat down and watched a classic western I would recommend Rio Bravo as your entry into the genre. You won’t be disappointed.

I have downloaded a new theme (Atahualpa) that, hopefully, will give me the opportunity to do a little more customization to the blog. Just didn’t want you all jarred out of your gourds.

Technorati Tags: Atahualpa, themes, Wordpress