Solus | Ipse

Terminator Salvation not the definitive film it was intended or touted to be.

2009-05-25T16:39:00.001-06:00

I was not very impressed with Terminator Salvation. It was a realistic and action-packed action/war film, and quite entertaining, but it was not the film I was expecting. Especially after the fiasco of the original ending leaked on the internet, and the subsequent re-working of the film ending, I was expecting the end-all-be-all of Terminator films. Not so much. There are really only two reasons I do not appreciate the film much: Christian Bale is not a good John Connor, and the film abandons the sci-fi themes critical to the Terminator ethos.

I like Christian Bale a lot. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are both the shit, in no small part due to Bale’s excellent serious portrayal of Wayne/Batman. In Salvation he cranks up the gravitas to the point of overacting, and to the point that his character is not very compelling or charismatic. He’s disquietingly fanatic , more jihadist than savior of humanity. Sure, terrorist or prophet is a matter of perspective, but I thought we were supposed to sympathize and identify with Connor. I didn’t.

There was no heroism in the character to inspire me like John Connor is supposed to do. In fact, every character that surrounded Bale outshined him as a heroic and sympathetic character. Anton Yelchin was great as Kyle Reese (though he’s a bit young I would have much preferred him as Connor), and Worthington’s Marcus was awesome. Even Moon Bloodgood’s Blair, though extraneous and peripheral, was a more interesting character than Bale’s Connor.

The character was dour and driven by a deep hatred of the machines, exceeding that of the people around him, casting him as the point-man in a grueling was of attrition against the machines. Yet much of what we know about John Connor from the other films and The Sarah Connor Chronicles portrays him as a much more pragmatic warrior. He understands that the machines are not people, or a culture ideologically pitted against humanity. They are programmed tools, and unlike humans they can simply be reprogrammed for alternate purposes. John Connor did this when he used and sent back T-800s in T2 and T3, as well as the unknown Cameron model in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and obviously trusts the reprogrammed machines as much or more than humans to give them such critical missions and put them in close proximity to sensitive assets such as his younger self. Yet Bale’s Connor is not this pragmatic strategist we’ve come to know as John Connor, he’s just a machine-hating ideologue. One cannot even argue this is a portrayal of the young Connor before he really comes into his own as the leader of the resistance, because lore from T2, T3, and Chronicles suggests Connor already understands the machines better than anyone else long before Judgment Day even occurs, so the hate-filled warrior played by Bale just doesn’t make sense. John Connor is a cooler and more intricate character than what McG and Bale make him.

The other reason I have problems with Salvation is because it veered off on a sci-fi tangent that is not really what Terminator mythology is about. I’ll keep it vague so I won’t give away any spoilers. The thrust of Salvation’s sci-fi theme is the identity crisis of Marcus Wright, the machine that thinks he’s a human. (This should have been a spoiler, but inexplicably the producers decided to use this as the trailer hook to bring audiences in rather than as the shocking reveal it could have been.) Is he a person? Is he a machine? Can he fight his programming? Are any of his decision really his own? Hello, Battlestar Galactica anyone? This has already been done exquisitely, in exacting detail, and much, much better in the BG saga. Salvation’s attempt was a very poor (and even wrong) gloss over the concept.

The entire attempt, poor as it was, was completely misguided anyway. Terminator is about the psychological schism between humans and machines. Machines are not, in any way, human, but their effectiveness in masquerading as humans makes them very creepy. The greatest scenes from the franchise hinge on this disparity between the machines’ human appearance and their non-human actions. Like when the “good” Shwartzeneggar T-800 in T2 tries to murder the guys that jump him before John Connor stops him, and Connor can’t explain why the Terminator shouldn’t kill (“You just can’t, okay?”). Like when the same Terminator realizes it must be destroyed and explains to Connor that it’s ok because it’s not human (“I know now why you cry, but it’s something I can never do”). Like how Cameron constantly seeks explanations for human actions that don’t make machine-sense, and then eerily mimics the actions even though she clearly still doesn’t understand the reasoning. The Marcus Wright character gives us none of this. He behaves just like a human, he thinks just like a human, he actually believes he is human. He has a Terminator body, but there is nothing Terminator about him. What’s interesting about the Marcus character is his humanity, not his Terminator-ity. He would have been equally entertaining as a mere human character with super strength and resilience, and that makes him an uninteresting Terminator and a useless addition to the Terminator mythos.

Terminator Salvation was a decent film with great action, horror, and effects, but I was dissatisfied because it never delivered the Terminator goodness I was craving and expecting, and it did nothing to advance the Terminator mythology.

Dial2Do is the free version of what Jott should be.

2009-04-19T19:15:00.001-06:00

I beta’d Jott, and it was cool. Then they went commercial and now charge $10/month for their voice transcription service. It’s cool and all, but not $10/month cool. Luckily around the same time Google Voice launched out of the GrandCentral acquisition, and now Google provides me with voicemail to text transcription free of charge (and even with better accuracy, imo).

Of course what’s cool about Jott that I missed was the ability to understand my voice and turn that into activities. I could send emails, post to blogs, update Twitter, etc. all simply by calling Jott and telling it what to do and what I wanted my message to be, and for the most part is would transcribe and email/post faithfully. Now I never became reliant upon Jott, so when they went commercial I did without it. However, I miss it.

I was discussing Google Voice and commercialization, and a friend (thanks Matz) recommend Dial2Do. I’ve just barely checked it out yet, but it’s more than an alternative, it’s a Jott killer.

Dial2Do does everything it’s pay service competitor does, and more, with a better and more intuitive clean interface. One thing that did always bugged me about Jott was that it kind of hard to navigate and find my stuff. Not very hard, but just non-obvious enough that it required effort. No one wants to spend effort checking messages (why my mobile voicemails tend to go unchecked for days at a time, because it’s a pain). Dial2Do alleviates this with a very simple uncluttered interface that gives me instant access to all my stuff.

Save for perhaps some expert features (Jott has launched new Voicemail and Salesforce paid services as well), Dial2Do does the same stuff, but with better transcription accuracy, and for friggin’ free. Yay and thank you Dial2Do!

A host of services are supported by Dial2Do. Twitter and calendar (Google Calendar integration!) are of course necessary and awesome, but Evernote was unexpected and welcome. Blogger, Kwiry, PingFm, PingMe, Remember The Milk, Tumblr, and Xpenser are all cool services to integrate with Dial2Do as well, and there’s many more. You can also listen to several sites’ rss feeds, including the beloved TechCrunch and Lifehacker.

I’m going to be trying to use Dial2Do often, and I think anyone interested in making their mobile more useful tool ought to give it a whirl too.

This is the standard Dial2Do screen. Every service I use is immediately available and all message counts clearly labeled.

The contacts screen is perfectly intuitive, as it should be.

A very clear enumeration of your added services, and exactly what to say to activate them. On Jott one just said the name of whatever service it was, but it often failed to understand and couldn’t differentiate between similar names.

New Love for Rye, and the Logical Conclusion of the Sazerac

2009-03-15T16:02:00.001-06:00

My whisk(e)y quest has now led me to rye. It’s a bourbony whiskey, but strong and sharp because of the predominant rye grain component instead of bourdon’s milder and sweeter corn base (not to mention it’s typically higher 46% ABV). I take things slow, and after 3 years of scotch and then bourbon devotion feel I have pretty well finalized my tastes in those, so now it’s to rye.

My first foray was with the well-reviewed Old Potrero, an old fashioned 100% rye whiskey, which I tried at the fantastic English-style brewery and scotch bar Pint’s Pub in Denver. Didn’t like it much, but I think it was just too much of a rye for a first taste. I just now got a bottle of Sazerac Rye, and this was just what I was looking for. Had it straight, over ice, and bastardized an Old Fashioned with it, and it was great all around. Inevitably, research of the brand led directly to the cocktail of the eponymous whiskey, the Sazerac.

As with most good whiskey cocktails, there’s little more to it than great whiskey. It bears quite a bit of resemblance to the Old Fashioned, and it’s an equally old but traditional New Orleans drink with slight ingredient changes and procedural and serving differences. Here’s the best classic recipe I found, on a Creole & Cajun cooking and culture site Gumbopages:

1/2 teaspoon absinthe, or Herbsaint (a New Orleans brand of anise liqueur)

1 teaspoon of simple syrup (or 1 sugar cube or 1 teaspoon of granulated sugar)

4 dashes Peychaud's bitters

1 small dash, a scant drop, of Angostura bitters (extremely optional; some feel it helps open the flavors, but traditionalists may leave it out).

2 ounces rye whiskey.

Strip of lemon peel

The traditional method: Pack a 3-1/2 ounce Old Fashioned (rocks) glass with ice. In another Old Fashioned glass, moisten the sugar cube with just enough water to saturate it, then crush. Blend with the whiskey and bitters. Add a few cubes of ice and stir to chill. Discard the ice from the first glass and pour in the Herbsaint. Coat the inside of the entire glass, pouring out the excess. Strain the whiskey into the Herbsaint coated glass. Twist the lemon peel over the glass so that the lemon oil cascades into the drink, then rub the peel over the rim of the glass; do not put the twist in the drink. Or, as Stanley Clisby Arthur says, "Do not commit the sacrilege of dropping the peel into the drink."

Reading this recipe I realized I had most (or similar) ingredients on hand, so I mixed myself up one. I’ve used both Peychaud’s and Angostura bitters, but found the Peychaud’s too mild for my Manhattan and Old Fashioned tastes, so I stock Angostura. Since it’s stronger I used just 3 dashes total Angostura in stead of the 4 (+1 optional Angostura) Peychaud’s.

The recipe calls for Herbsaint pastis, but this is a local substitute that found it’s way into the recipe when the original Absinthe ingredient was banned in 1912. I happened to have some Lucid Absinthe on hand, so I figure I was a step ahead than the prohibition-era recipe.

I went through the twist of lemon with the Old Fashioned, and I just found that I get a lot less effort, mess, and better flavor from Fee Brother’s Orange Bitters. I probably should try with lemon instead of orange, but for whatever reason the few places that carry Fee Brother’s at all only stock the orange. (I’ll probably just someday buy a full range of their bitters online, because I would certainly like to try the mint bitters in my mojitos and juleps, and maybe their classic bitters will turn out to be better than Angostura.)

The last step is the sweetener, and I absolutely recommend not only using simple syrup instead of sugar, but making your own. One can of course just buy it (and I did, once), but it is so easy to make, so widely useful in cocktail mixing, and so stupidly expensive to buy that it’s worth it even to a lazy guy like me to do-it-yourself. Straightforward recipe from Epicurious:

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups water

Preparation

Stir sugar and water in heavy large saucepan over medium heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat and boil 3 minutes. Cool syrup, then cover and chill until cold, about 2 hours. (Will keep up to a month in the refrigerator.)

Again, lazy as I am, I didn’t coat the glass with the Absinthe, I just put several drops directly into a shaker and gently shook the whole thing. Despite dire warnings against shaking such fine cocktails, the only downsides are 1) it melts the ice faster, resulting in more dilution of the ingredients, and 2) furious shaking mixes air into the liquid making it cloudy with bubbles and frothy. So, add less ice for less dilution, and shake very gently just to move the ice around and mix the ingredients a bit until chilly. Shakers are too convenient to eschew on general principle.

My first Sazerac was very good, just a bit too sweet and with too much Absinthe, because as one might suspect of me I also do not measure out ingredients, I eyeball everything. It starts as laziness, but as I become more familiar with the drinks and find just the right balance for my tastes I’m able to keep the proportions very consistent without measuring. I like to gain this skill because it’s certainly easier than pulling out jiggers and measuring spoons every time I want to mix a drink, plus I’ve always found it more professional to know a recipe “by feel” than to simply follow steps.

With the second I erred a little in the opposite direction and it was too dry. Of course one can always add but not subtract, so I did and got it too a very pleasant and perfect balance. Damn good, and a fine additional to my personal repertoire of fine cocktails which is now:

Old Fashioned
Manhattan
Mint Julep
Mojito
Martini
…and Sazerac

Next cocktail of interest: Hemingway’s Mistress.

Comcast 50Mbps broadband is a 500hp engine with a 3-cup gas tank.

2009-03-01T13:24:00.001-07:00

Comcast has some aggressive plans for its "superfast" wideband connectivity in 2009. The cable giant hopes to roll out DOCSIS 3.0 to 65 percent of its reach before the end of this year, which amounts to some 30 million homes and businesses. –ars technica

Great news, I've been looking forward to Comcast's higher speed rollout for a year now. However, counter-intuitively, even the $150/month premium subscribers still get saddled with the 250GB/month download limit. Here's some math:

250GB/month × 1000MB/GB × 8Mb/MB = 2,000,000Mb(megabits)/month

At 50Mbps (megabits/second) the 2 million Mb limit is exhausted in 2,000,000/50 = 40,000sec =

approximately 11 hours.

So with your fancy new Comcast 50Mbps fat pipe, if you actually use your bandwidth you will reach the 250GB limit after only 11 hours of maximizing the line. Start a bunch of HD video downloads in the evening, and by the time you wake the next morning Comcast is already drafting a letter telling you to cease all internet use for the rest of the month.

If you are a continuous downloader who always has something transferring, as I am, to keep under the cap your need to keep your bandwidth under:

2,000,000Mb(megabits)/month ÷ 30 days ÷ 24 hours ÷ 60 min ÷ 60 sec =

0.77Mbps.

This is 1.5% of the 50Mbps bandwidth. In 2000 I had 1Mbps broadband from AT&T (later bought by Comcast), which means 9 years ago I had a higher per month bandwidth allowance than I do today.

To address the metaphor in the title, a powerful 500hp BMW 5-Series averages 15mpg. If the potential of this vehicle were limited like Comcast hogties it’s broadband, it would sport only 1.5% of a standard 12-gallon gas tank, which is 12 gallons × .015 = .18 gallons =

2.88 cups.

Even if we generously grant the BMW it’s average 15mpg at top speed, .18 gallons is about a fifth of a gallon, so the car can burn in all it’s 500hp ferocity for a stunning 3 miles before it’s empty.

Comcast’s response, that “less than 1% (currently it’s about one tenth of 1%) of Comcast customers today use an excessive amount of data. Excessive users consume so much data that the usage could negatively impact the online service for other customers,” is the same as saying only 1% of BMW drivers drive top speed and that their excessive fuel consumption could negatively impact fuel availability for moderate users, so the tiny gas tanks are employed to cripple full use of the car’s capabilities and ensure everyone only uses the monster machines in moderation as if they were Volvo station wagons helmed by soccer moms . Sounds more retarded now, doesn’t it?

Comcast’s bandwidth cap limits their highest tier customers to a ridiculously small 1.5% of the service’s potential, and higher speeds in the future just become uselessly frustrating way of hitting the brick wall faster. I do love the broadband quality, but I’m broaching the “abusive” user class as it is with 6Mbps. It would take some serious restraint to keep under the limit if I had 50Mbps at my disposal, and as a premium customer at $150 a month I ought not to have to worry about it either.

360Desktop Solves My Media Center Control Issues

2009-02-28T16:00:00.001-07:00

I’ve been having a few challenges with my multi-monitor HTPC setup. Control via iPod Touch with Mobile Airmouse is fantastic, and Vista Media Center is pretty slick. However, my problem is that occasionally I want to do a little more than just launch and navigate Media Center on my tv. The simplest example is web browsing. Firefox defaults to my computer monitor, where I use it 99% of the time. If I launch it via iPod remote while watching tv, it still of course displays on the monitor, not the tv. There is no simple way for me to get Firefox over to the tv while viewing the tv only. I can move my mouse over to the monitor, but since I can’t see the monitor I’ve no idea what I’m doing.

What I need is a “clone” mode where each display is a window to full control of all the PC’s features. I use only one display at a time, so everything can be on the same single desktop rather than an extended one. There is in fact a standard Windows clone mode where each display shows exactly the same single desktop, which would be the perfect solution except that clone mode forces each display to the same resolution. My monitor (1280x1024) and tv (1280x720) are not, and I do not want them to be, the same resolution. Scratch that.

I have read about several multi-monitor utilities, most notably the famed UltraMon, freeware taskbar extender Multimon, and open source DisplayFusion. I have not tried any because from the feature descriptions they do not seem to address my particular issue. They are geared toward the more typical multi-monitor setup where all screens are in front of the user and one is seeking to maximize the potential of spreading one’s computing tasks over a multiple display area. None address my one computer, two monitors, two rooms scenario (though I don’t believe this is an uncommon setup). Even with these applications the individual monitors act independently as their own encapsulated regions with their own functions, rather than a single space duplicated on two displays.

360Desktop is a very cool application I tried a while ago, but abandoned because I didn’t have much use for it and my old machine didn’t run it very well. It’s a twist on virtual desktops, but instead of replacing one complete screen with another, it stitches the virtual areas together into a seamless scrolling panorama. I never liked it as a virtual desktop solution because I preferred the instant complete screen swap rather than the prettier and more dramatic, but also more cumbersome and manual, panorama scrolling.

However 360Desktop’s design has a simple feature that makes it a pretty good solution to my problem. Instead of creating virtual desktops tailored to individual displays and their settings, 360Desktop creates a large virtual space and maps both displays, at their own resolutions, onto that space. All my apps can run wherever I want them and I can slide the virtual space side to side to move the view back and forth from monitor to tv. Now I can watch Media Center on the tv, and if I need to browse the web I can launch Firefox on the monitor and slide the tv display over to Firefox, and then slide it back to Media Center when I’m done.

I’m still not sold on 360Desktop as the most efficient control of virtual space, but so far it seems to be the only app that solves my issues.

And the Award for Best PC Media Remote Goes to… the iPod Touch

2009-02-23T19:28:00.001-07:00

(Sorry, just finished a fast-forwarding through 5 hours of DVR’d Oscar extravaganza, and I’ve got pompous self-importance on the brain.)

I recently settled upon connecting my PC directly to my HDTV as the best solution for watching AVI and WMV computer video files on the tv. Everything was great, except I had no convenient way to control the 20’ distant PC from my couch. So now that I had settled upon the most efficient media setup, I needed to research the most effective remote.

The standard and most easily found PC remotes come in two flavors, infrared (IR) like your basic tv and DVD payer remotes that need to be aimed at the machine, and radio (RF) like cordless phones that can communicate in any direction and through walls up to a certain distance. IR was not an option because my PC is not located where a connected IR receiver device is visible from the couch, so I wouldn’t be able to aim the remote where it needed to be aimed (without jury-rigging some USB extension cable thing and wiring the receiver to the tv as well, but I already have enough cabling running around the house). RF remotes would have been the answer, but the cheapest decent one I found was the Firefly at $50. Remotes such as the Firefly bill themselves as “universal” remotes, but for a lot of specialized hardware (like my Motorola DVR from Comcast) these remotes simply don’t have the functionality. My Comcast remote won’t easily control the PC, and the PC remote won’t easily control the DVR, so the PC remote would end up being relegated to the simple duty of running videos. $50 is more than I wanted to spend on a single function device that would only control the media center, and at that price I thought I might be better served by a wireless keyboard and mouse combo so I could have complete control and also use the tv for convenient websurfing if I so chose.

That turned me off the simple remote solutions and got me searching for the coolest wireless mouse. My favorite solutions for that were Kensington’s Slimblade Media Mouse and Media Presenter Mouse. Both are Bluetooth laser mice on one side, and flip them over for a media remote on the underside. The presenter also has the additional cool feature that the middle button rollerball is a full trackball as well, allowing complete mouse control in without a mousing surface. Neither is cheap, at $50 and $80, but they are cool wireless mice that allow the full control I desired.

The Kensington mice seemed a great solution, however in my search for the best wireless mouse I learned that you can control your PC with your iPod Touch or iPhone. Intrigued, I found a handful of apps that will do this, ranging from too simplistic to overly complex. The simple free apps like Apple’s Remote and VLC Remote are geared just toward iTunes or other media applications and won’t do more extensive video and desktop control. More complex apps, like Mochasoft’s Remote Desktop, are actually complete VNC or Windows Remote Desktop clients which tie into the PC and give you complete remote access to all the computer’s functions, so far as to have a virtual representation of the computer desktop on the iPod screen. The simple media apps just didn’t give me the flexibility I needed, and the full remotes were too cumbersome – who wants to navigate a huge PC monitor display and make menu selections on a tiny hand-held screen? Not I.

Luckily I came across two great apps that bridge the gap between simple and complex and make the near-perfect media remote solution. Neither are free, but they are cheap and absolutely worth it. So much so I bought and use both.

The first is Zemote ($3.99). This brilliant app is designed for exactly what I want: a simple interface that commands all Media Center’s functions, and alternative sophisticated mouse control for when I need to deal with other PC applications. The apps three main screens are the media remote, trackpad, and keyboard.

The trackpad allows full cursor control just like a notebook pad, with right and left mouse buttons and scroll bar. In addition, using the iPod’s built-in accelerometer one can hold the dual-arrow button in the lower left corner and move the iPod in the air and control the cursor movement. Mouse control is frustrating, especially via the accelerometer, but it works.

The keyboard is straightforward, but is a full virtual PC keyboard including Windows, Function, and Control keys, as opposed to the mere text entry keyboard native to the iPod. It’s also conveniently landscape oriented, a blessing for the fat-fingered such as myself.

The real coolness of Zemote is the media screen, which by default controls the majority of Media Center’s functions. The Home button launches MC, volume, fast-forward, and skip all do as expected, and the Back button, navigation pad, and scroll bar are perfection. Really everything I want to do in Media Center is contained on that one screen. Occasionally I swap to the keyboard or trackpad to reposition windows of do other activities outside Media Center, such as web browsing, but really the vast majority of my media PC experience is handled by Zemotes’ simple and smart media controller.

My only issues with Zemote are mouse control and configurability. The trackpad is very slow, typically requiring two to three thumb repositionings to move the cursor across the screen. The accelerometer movement is equally pokey. You have to hold the button and tilt the iPod and hold while the cursor jerks lazily across the monitor. Luckily those flaws don’t kill the app, since most of the time one probably won’t be using the mouse control, but rather the much better thought out media screen.

Some time ago, while it was still beta software, I tried the Mobile Air Mouse ($5.99) app. It was one of the first apps to tap into the iPod’s accelerometer and touchscreen as a PC mouse control surrogate. At the time it was a quirky and novel concept, fun to toy around with, but ultimately just too ahead of it’s time to get much use. However, the app has been in aggressive development, and now in it’s 1.5+ iteration is massively improved.

Basic functions and interface are the same as Zemote, though immediately the commercial polish of Air Mouse is apparent (and to be fair, the app had this going for it from the get-go. It always looked super slick). Air Mouse’s trackpad screen is conveniently coupled with other controls, so one can pause and skip tracks, web browse, and keyboard input without abandoning the trackpad. A cool underrepresented feature is that by simply shaking the iPod downwards, or rotating it to landscape view, the keyboard or control buttons slide out of sight leaving the whole touchscreen available for trackpad control. Shake the iPod upwards, or rotate it back to portrait view, to bring back the hidden controls.

Air Mouse includes a web browsing screen with dedicated controls for typical browser activities. I don’t find this a huge advantage as I try to do as little browsing as possible on the awkward tv screen, but others could find a lot of convenience in this feature. The keyboard is also present, though it lacks the comfortable landscape view.

The function screen stands out as the most different. This screen activates function keys which typically correspond to many media controls, and also grants four customizable hotkey for application launching or keyboard shortcut replication. Also here are arrows keys which compare to the directional pad on Zemote’s media screen.

What’s unfortunate about Air Mouse is that it doesn’t come out-of-the-box ready for PC control. It’s hotkeys must be manually configured for each application is is to control. It comes with hotkeys pre-programmed for iTunes and Windows Media Player, but I had to program Media Center myself, which was only a chore because not all the default controls correspond to MC controls, so it took some trial and error. Also no single Air Mouse screen combines all the features I need in one place. I need the arrows keys for file selection and menus navigation, but the play, skip, and pause control are on another screen, so within Media Center I need to swap screens depending upon what I’m doing. Zemote puts it all on one screen. A minor inconvenience, but it does force me to interact with the remote rather than just being able to memorize buttons and control my media without thinking, as one should be able to do with a good remote.

As is the nature of iPod network apps, they communicate via wi-fi, not IR, RF, or Bluetooth. So of course one needs a home wi-fi network set up to make use of these apps, but that’s no big deal these days (a good wireless broadband router, useful even if one has only a single computer, can be had very cheap like my $40 Netgear). Another excellent uncelebrated feature of both these apps is that they leverage Apple’s Bonjour network service for zero-configuration networking. Install the app on your iPod, install it on your PC (already installed automatically with iTunes), and when both are running the automatically find each other on your network with no effort from you. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but spend some time toying around with your router and firewall port forwarding and pinning down dynamic local IP addresses and you’ll come to value the simplicity as I have.

Now given my criticisms one might think I lean toward Zemote, but in fact the opposite is true; I completely embrace Air Mouse as the best iPod remote app. It certainly looks better, but the real reason is the touchscreen and accelerometer control. They are fantastic. I can zip the cursor across my 42” screen with a simple thumb slide, yet have perfect fine control to move pixel by pixel. And the accelerometer control, which is Zemote’s biggest weakness, is Air Mouse’s forte. The cursor moves realtime with your movements of the iPod. A quick flick spend the cursor flying, and subtle twist moves it smoothly and slowly, but always in exact lockstep with the speed of your own movements. With Zemote a twist to the right set the cursor moving toward the right at a fixed pace, no matter how fervent the iPod motion. You simply have to hold the iPod at it’s angle to maintain the cursor motion until it reaches it’s destination. Air Mouse is tenfold more natural and accurate and come s close to true synergistic perfection in motion control. Additionally, if you don’t like the default sensitivity, you can increase or decrease it for both accelerometer and touchscreen control, which you can’t with Zemote.

If you have a Nintendo Wii you know something about cool motion-to-cursor control via hand-held accelerometers, and have certainly marveled at the Wii’s fine control. Air Mouse is even better. Whether the credit is due Air Mouse’s software engineers or Apple’s accelerometer engineers I don’t know, but Mobile Air Mouse is the PC and media remote app of choice for me.

First Foray into Home Theater PC

2009-02-23T15:56:00.003-07:00

I have a lot of media on my PC that I want to enjoy on my HDTV. Most of the media is DivX/Xvid encoded, high compression video codecs typically distributed in the AVI file format. This was pretty convenient because one can get pretty inexpensive DVD payers that also support playback of these codecs. Philips has an extensive line of DivX certified players (which also play Xvid), and I own the old DVP420 and the DVP5140 which were each just $60. These are great because I can just burn 5GB worth of AVIs onto a DVD±R and play them on the machine as easily as regular DVDs.

However, there has always been a lot of web content in Microsoft’s WMV only, and more recently the DivX/Xvid codecs have fallen out of favor for HD content. I don’t understand fully the reasons why, but I suspect it’s simply a bandwidth issue. WMV compresses video more than DivX/Xvid which makes it easier to distribute online, and everyone with Windows already has the WMV codecs installed by default on their system and need do nothing else to enjoy the playback. However, for a long time the proprietary codec appeared in almost no video hardware other than PCs and Microsoft’s own XBox. There are a few devices appearing now that play everything, including WMV and the newer H.264, but they fairly expensive and are really just lobotomized PCs.

My old fashioned method of watching WMV media on the tv was connecting a notebook via the s-video tv-out and streaming from PC to notebook to tv. Fine enough, but I wanted a permanent solution instead of hijacking my girlfriend’s notebook every time we wanted to watch. Also, the s-video and vga outputs are poor quality and cannot transmit HD content.

I thought a lot about media extenders and cheap HTPCs. In the end was unimpressed with the available extenders and their limitations. Good ones with everything I wanted (HDMI, 1080p, DivX/XviD and WMV codecs) crept up in price near the low end for and HTPC ($300), and I didn’t see too much point in paying the same for a limited half-computer as for a complete HTPC with far more capability. An HTPC would satisfy all my needs, but seemed extravagant and redundant considering my current PC already had all the storage and playback capabilities I wanted, and I was not interested in replacing my Comcast DVR with a homebrew solution. Not to mention the electricity of yet another always-on PC in the home.

For a very short period I was enamored with the Asus Eee Box as an inexpensive ($300) and extremely low-power-consumption HTPC. Throw a remote on this thing and it would be the ideal form factor and power usage for a media player appliance, while in fact being a limited but full-blown Windows XP machine. Unfortunately several reviews of the box panned it’s 1080p HD capabilities, citing stuttering and slowdowns as the under-powered Atom processor tried to decode the massive video stream. My HDTV is a 720p display, and the Eee Box apparently handles that ok, but I do have 1080p files that get downscaled, and eventually I foresee a 1080p display in my future. $300 is a great price for a PC, but unfortunately HD video playback is the primary requirement of my home theater setup, so the Eee Box doesn’t pass muster. So just tapping the underutilized display capabilities of my Asus Radeon 4850 video card seemed smartest. It already supports HD video, and I’ve already got the decent Vista Media Center.

(The new 204/206 models boast a faster Atom processor and HDMI output to supposedly handle 1080p content, and might still end up being my device of choice in the future.)

I cabled my PC to my HDTV as a second monitor via the DVI-to-HDMI adapter included with the lovely 4850. A pretty nifty solution, and I was happy to have the part included with the card (the advantage of buying quality brand cards from Asus, Gigabyte, Sapphire, etc. versus the discount cards from other vendors). I thought about how best to additionally wire sound from my machine to the tv, because though HDMI can carry both HD video and quality digital sound together, DVI, the video output on the Radeon card, is video only. Or so I thought. I was thrilled to find out that a digital audio processor is built into the card (Asus’, at least), and that the mild-manned DVI port actually does include audio, specifically for porting to HDMI as I did. Awesome.

So in the end all it took was an inexpensive $22 25’ HDMI cable and I had full HD video and digital sound on my HDTV. Not only is the quality perfect, but compared to the $200-$400 extender and HTPC alternatives the price is unbeatable. The only thing I lacked was a convenient way to control the 20’ distant PC while sitting on the couch. But that was soon to be fixed.

50% of Charges Against Pirate Bay Dropped

2009-02-18T19:08:00.001-07:00

There has been high drama on the second day of the Pirate Bay trial. Due to serious shortcomings in the prosecution evidence, around 50% of the charges in the case are going to have to be withdrawn. The defense describes it as a ’sensation’, seeing half of the charges being dropped on the second day. -Torrentfreak

It's very funny to see these technology trials go to court and to have prosecutor's cases trashed because they fail to understand the intricacies. Don't these people spend hours upon hours (or rather have assistants/interns spend hours upon hours) doing research before strolling into court?

I'm certain handfuls of prosecutor's office staffers have used bittorrent and made illicit downloads themselves and understand it better than the prosecutor. But given the rabid enthusiasm with which the legal lap-dogs go after their media company masters' enemies, I'm not surprised those who know better and could help the case are too afraid to chime in. Serves them right for cultivating a lawsuit-happy threatening environment.

Windows 7 Beta Ending This Week

2009-02-11T00:23:00.003-07:00

Thank god(s).

I'm really tired of the Windows 7 beta hulaballoo (sp?), especially since a chunk of it it just about how people can't even get in on the hulaballoo.

It's a great move on Microsoft's part. On one side they cultivate fluffy happy goodwill by letting people try the shiny new OS free, something heretofore decidedly anti-M$. One the flipside they will reap the benefits of a cynical, evil marketing ploy which gives people 8 months to get hooked on the thing before pulling the plug. ("When the Beta expires on August 1, 2009, you’ll need to reinstall a released version of Windows to keep using your computer." -Microsoft Technet)

I have not bothered suffering the interminable delays in acquiring my copy of the 8-month-till-death OS. Call me a late-adopter, but I'm still acclimating to my new Vista install. And to the death-clocked beta OS that will soon pass, good riddance. Maybe my tech blogs can find something else to discuss now.

Curse of Recursivity

2009-02-10T23:30:00.003-07:00

Apologies to anyone who might be keeping tabs on my intermittent blogging, but perhaps you noticed an alarming flurry of duplicate cross-posts between this blog and my tumblog?

If not, count yourself blessed. If so, sorry.

I am the unwitting victim of recursive cross-posting via a nifty (and deceptively harmless) webservice called Switchabit. Switchabit will take posts from one of your webservices and automagically repost them on one or several of your other services, so you can disseminate your banality with ease via every medium at your disposal. The goal here was simply to cross-post my tumblog posts to this SolusIpse blog. Posting to Tumblr is easy and convenient, and I do so with much greater regularity than I post here. I thought "hey, why waste my pretty custom webspace" and tried to incorporate the convenience of Tumblr with the customizeability of a robust "macroblogging" blogging platform like Blogger.

I presume I simply misconfigured Switchabit somwhere, but regardless it ended up porting my tumblog post to here, then re-porting this blog back to Tumblr, then that new Tumblr post back to here, etc. I'm surprised after a couple days it only generated 27 posts. On each blog.

I've deactivated Switchabit until a get a better handle on what I did.

http://www.liquorsnob.com/archives/2009/02/the_jigger_cube.php

2009-02-09T19:03:00.001-07:00

The Jigger Cube

The Good Superbowl Movie Previews

2009-02-02T13:33:00.002-07:00

Of all the upcoming films previewed during the Superbowl, here are the three worth mentioning:

Star Trek

GI Joe

Transformers 2

Star Trek will either be the best or worst thing to happen to the franchise, GI Joe will either resurrect to glory (a la X-Men) a childhood cult or bury it forever, and Transformers looks like it might be a little more interesting than the pretty *meh* original.

This was not in the Superbowl, but in case you missed it, this needs to be included with the above three (especially since I threw Transformers a bone and included it)

Watchmen (check out the site for individualized trailers for the different characters)

Get Great Software Free*

2009-01-11T14:11:00.001-07:00

Trialpay is an alternative payment service that lets you buy online services and software by trying or making minor purchases of other software or services instead of paying. The net result is that you get the software you want, or even 2 programs or services, for free (or very cheap). This article goes into great detail about the whole process, including the nearly comprehensive list of almost 300 products you can get. Here I’m going to point out a few gems form the overwhelming list that I think are really worth getting.

Clipmate 7 (homepage)

Great very full-featured clipboard manager. I posted a link about free clipboard utilities, but for free this is a great application.

Flashpaste Pro (homepage)

Another full-featured clipboard utility, this one specializes more in simplicity and speed and keeping frequently needed text just a keystroke away.

Outpost Firewall Pro (homepage)

The best firewall out there. A little complex and geared towards power users, but the best performer in most head-to-head firewall tests.

Photobucket Pro (homepage)

Excellent image hosting and online photo album service. Their free service is already very good, but through trialpay you can get 1 year pro service which doubles image size, vastly increases storage, and enables goodies like flash support and ftp access.

Magic Workstation (homepage)

I was surprised to find this on on the list! This is a cool program for the Magic: the Gathering collectible card game (of which I was a huge fan). Catalog your entire collection, build game decks, and play online. I actually bought this program several years ago for $20.

Mobile PhoneTools (homepage)

Good program for connecting your mobile to your computer. Easy file transfers.

Kaspersky Antivirus (homepage)

One of the better antivirus applications available. As with all antivirus the program is only secondary to the regularly updated service, and trialpay will get you 1 year of updates.

RoboForm (homepage)

The world’s premier password management software.

WinRAR (homepage)

One of the simplest and most effective archiving utilities. The only way to make RARs.

ThreatFire (homepage)

A cool PC security solution. Instead of relying upon instantly obsolete virus databases, it monitors the activities of processes running on your machine for suspicious virus-like activities and blocks them before they can do any damage.

Here are some of the most interesting offers you can accept to get the free stuff above. My personal favorite is the Vistaprint offer. Shipping is $6.

GoDaddy.com offers a variety of domain name registration and Web site hosting services, as well as Web site creation tools, e-commerce and security solutions, and productivity and marketing tools. You must be a NEW customer who has never had an account with GoDaddy.com, and purchase a domain name, hosting, or other paid Go Daddy service and spend at least $2.50.

Get 4 bags of roasted-to-order, gourmet Boca Java coffee for just $8.95. Plus get FREE Shipping! A $35.75 retail value! The coffee you order today gets roasted specifically for you. We offer more than 30 unique blends and flavors!

Sign up for GameFly, the leading video game rental service. Choose from over 6,000 titles for your PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox 360, Wii, PSP Gamecube or Nintendo DS. No due dates or late fees. Start today for only $6.95!

Get 250 free business cards from VistaPrint, the leading provider of printing services online. Select your card styles and only pay shipping and handling.

Sign up as a new customer with Snapfish and make your first purchase. See for yourself why Snapfish is one of the most popular online services to manage and print your digital photos. (Response time: Credits in 1 day)

Black Metal War Machine 2.0

2009-01-02T22:05:00.001-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

I finally built my own PC. I’ve wanted to do so for 5+ years now, but at first I was just too nervous about mucking it up and destroying coveted and costly parts. 5 1/2 years ago I went half way and had a machine built for me. I designed the system and specified all the parts individually and took the list to a local PC shop to have it constructed. They did a fine job, and I’m happy to say the Black Metal War Machine 1.0 ran great for over 5 years without a Windows reinstall, ever. It could have used one, but not critically so. However, it did chew through a motherboard, video card, and power supply, but that’s still not too bad for what at the time was a high performance gaming PC.

This time around I’ve mellowed. I’m not the gaming enthusiast I was then. Back then it was my first PC and I was a giddy gamer-boy just freed from the gaming gloom of Mac life. I burned out on that pretty quick, though, and in recent years my gaming has dwindled significantly to a couple MMORPGs, which don’t tax the hardware too much. Even so, the old 1.0 was struggling. So I updated but didn’t go anywhere near the top-of-the-line I did last time. Given how long I held on to the last one, I figure I’m probably better off hanging with the tech curve by spending half as much but buying a new PC twice as often. So while that original machine ended up close to $2000, this one was a reasonable $800 thanks to Maximum PC’s great online article How to Build a Kick-Ass $800 Gaming PC. My machine is pretty close to this, but since I got everything at less than quoted prices from bad-ass Newegg deals I ended up upgrading several components for the same price.

Black Metal War Machine 2.0

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
-$10.00 Instant
$64.99
$54.99

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R ATX Intel Motherboard
-$5.00 Instant
$15.00 Mail-in Rebate
$119.99
$114.99

Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
-$5.00 Instant
$74.99
$69.99

ASUS Radeon HD 4850 EAH4850 TOP/HTDI/512M Video Card
-$20.00 Instant
$30.00 Mail-in Rebate
$169.99
$149.99

Antec Nine Hundred Black Computer Case With Side Panel Window

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
-$30.00 Instant
-$30.00 Combo
$304.98
$244.98

Rosewill Stallion Series RD500-2DB 500W Power Supply

LG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE Model GH22NP20
-$15.00 Instant
-$20.00 Combo
$80.98
$45.98

Grand Total:
$680.92

Plus another $100 separately for the OS, Vista Home Premium, for a real total of $780.

It took me a good 5 hours, from out of the box to surfing the internet, but I don’t think that’s too bad for really the first time I’ve really assembled a machine. I’ve put in RAM and swapped hard drives, video cards, and optical drives before, but that really doesn’t prepare one for much. Installing the CPU, heatsink/cooler, and the motherboard were the most nerve-wracking, because that’s where one can most easily destroy the most critical (i.e. expensive) components. Luckily things have simplified a lot in recent years and it really was just plop the CPU block into place and lock it down, snap the cooler on, and screw the whole motherboard/CPU/cooler ensemble into the case. Memory, hard and optical drives, and video card were pretty simple. The bitchin’ Radeon 4850 heatsink was HUGE and unwieldy, but it was nice to see a serious thermal solution on the video card considering the cooler on my previous once-upon-a-time-awesome Radeon 9800 was a craptastic little plastic thing that broke quickly. The next harrowing task was wiring. Every component needs it’s own power, all spawning from the 500 watt supply, and that thing has a lot of cables. Luckily every cable can plug in to mostly only one socket so it ends up being just a complicated process of elimination.

So then it was done. I powered it up and low and behold, it turned on. (I really expected it to do nothing at all!) Then came the OS install, which stumped me for some time. The machine just wouldn’t recognize the disk, until I realized I had connected the optical drive incorrectly. I rewired, and it worked with no further issue. Booyah!

This sweet case has four huge fans, two large 120mm intakes, one more 120mm exhaust in back, and one rare super-massive 200mm on the top for extraordinary airflow cooling with almost no noise.

Plus, sweet pimp blue LEDs! I thought on this PC I wouldn’t bother with colored LEDs, but they were just included in this otherwise very desirable case, and now when I fire the thing up in the dark I’m pretty happy with it. Check it out:

And of course, after everything, it blows away anything I give it. The few graphics-intensive programs I use, Guild Wars, Second Life, and Photoshop, all scream with this rig. It’s certainly not the top-of-the-line and might have issues with the latest and most intensive games available (which I’m not playing), but it is state-of-the-art with lots of the latest components. Plus now that I’ve built one there’s no more trepidation about tinkering around inside the box so I’ll be plenty enthusiastic to upgrade and modify as necessary in the future.

Game on.

Camping 101

2008-07-07T19:55:00.001-06:00

Kris and I are working on becoming outdoorsmen (outdoorspersons?). I don't know what got into us, but several weeks ago for an unknown reason we decided to take a trip into the Rockies. We had never camped before and had zero equipment, but after searching a bit we found lots of places have cool cabins and yurts for rent. This was perfect as it offered a semi-rustic experience without requiring much in the way of supplies from us.

We settled upon a yurt because it was the same price as a cabin but was a more exotic experience. (Who the heck's been in a yurt?) The first and very nice place we found was Sylvan Lake, pretty deep into the Rockies and about a 2 hour drive.

We headed on out with some bedding, novice fishing gear, and fishing license in hand to... Novo Coffee, because I just can't start my day without a good cup of fresh ground, french-pressed Sumatran. Anyway, after that base was covered we really were on our way on good old I-70 right up into the hills.

The yurt was actually 9 miles from the lake, which didn't sound like a big deal until we found it was 9 miles of rough 10-15mph dirt roads. Do the math: 9mi/15mph=0.6hr= 36 minutes! Yes it was a more than half hour each way to and from the lake and our yurt camp. It ended up being ok because at least it was a picturesque and pleasant drive. We unloaded our stuff at the yurt, and it was damn cool. Huge, good to sleep six, and much nicer than we had anticipated. No water or electricity (they had solar-powered electric overhead lights, but we didn't use them), but spacious and clean and outfitted with two futons, bunk beds, chairs and table, cabinet, and a gas fireplace. I found out they are made in CO by no less than the Colorado Yurt Company. Who'd a thunk?

After dropping our stuff we headed back out down the bumpy dirt road to the lake to get some fishing in before dark. We got to the lake and were surprised how small it was. It wasn't a pond, but for some place that ranked pretty well on my web searches and was so deep in the mountains and far from urban CO, I expected to be overwhelmed by nature. Not so much. There are city reservoirs near where I live that are a lot bigger than Sylvan Lake. It was fairly tranquil, except for the several truck-loads of Mexican families, replete with screechy children, that had met there for a big cookout. We gathered our gear and walked well away from the party.

Now, I have never fished. Just a few kiddie trips to the local pond when I was 10 or younger. Kris used to "go fishing a lot", except I came to find out that really meant "went with my son and ex while they fished". So it was an adventure. We had pole-assembly issues, tangled line problems, weight, bobber, and bait fiascos, and then when all those preliminaries were out of the way we found casting isn't quite the simple thing one would think. Eventually we got the hook in the water and let it steep, but of course no fish. I know fishing (at least still water fishing) is as much relaxation as it is sport, but I think he requisite patience is another acquired angler skill. And then it rained. So, our first foray into fishing didn't go so well.

We thought about waiting out the rain, but it was also getting a bit late and would have been be dark in not too long, so we went back to the yurt for the evening. It stopped raining by the time we got back, so we set about building our campfire and making some dinner. The menu was simple: Modelo, Funyuns, and Bubba Burgers. The cooking worked out great, and those burgers were awesome. We were both very impressed with the frozen patties, and we've since made them a staple of our campfire cooking.

The most important part of a camping experience, to me, is sitting by the fire in the evening and into the night and enjoying the peace. And a good whisky. So I did.

We woke very early the next morning with the light, about 5am. It was cold but I was eager to get a fire and breakfast going, and found that enjoying the early morning around a campfire is just as uniquely pleasant as at night. I boiled some water for some campfire coffee (though I did compromise with just instant coffee for less mess), and then we put our sausage and Egg Beaters on (those are so good I have little need to eat regular eggs again). Breakfast was also fantastic. People told us and now I agree: campfire cooking just tastes better. It's certainly psychological, but a better experience is a better experience, and it was better!

Kris and I tried to go back to sleep a bit after breakfast. Kris had no problem and ended up sleeping for several more hours until about 10am. I dozed a little bit but then got up, collected some more wood, and tended the fire for a couple hours. Good times.

Before we had packed up out gear and loaded up the car, we already had plans for our next camping trip!

View the whole photo album

The Gmail Consolidation.

2008-06-21T21:51:00.001-06:00

It's been a popular thing to do among web-savvy types for a long time now, but I've finally, seriously, migrated to Gmail for all email use.

I have long been a holdout against webmail in general, preferring fuller-featured desktop applications (Outlook Express, then Outlook for a while, and finally for the last couple years Thunderbird). They are quicker and allow for more efficient sorting, and since I have them open for calendaring anyway I might as well multipurpose them. Plus, even to this day, every webmail app I've used except Gmail is 1990s-era crap.

I really never was dissatisfied with Thunderbird as an email client. What in the end turned me to Gmail was spam. I wrote several times about my beloved spam-fighting tool Spamgourmet. It really is a fantastic email filtering system that I am surprised no other organization had implemented (it's open-source, after all). Anyway, in the end the main issue is merely that Spamgourmet is the sole provider of this cool filtering software (and I'm not knowledgeable enough to set it up on my own mail server), and their servers seems to be getting slower and slower every day, so much that I occasionally have to wait hours for an email to get through them to me.

The great interface and usability of Gmail aside, another much-lauded feature of Google's system is their very effective automated spam-filtering. So I initially decided to just use Gmail as a spam filter by forwarding all my mail through a Gmail address and them downloading from there to my desktop, so Google would filter spam from all of my 15+ addresses. In the process of setting all the forwarding on all my accounts and testing to make sure it worked well, I used Gmail webmail and found that it really is very good.

It doesn't nicely sort my mail into folders like I'm used to, but I guess that's actually a paradigm issue I need to come to terms with. Folder sorting is old-school. Tagging is the 'in' thing. Now that I'm getting the hang of it, I might have to admit tagging is more effective sorting after all. Plus, if you just lump all your mail together and simply trust in the Google gods, you can very effectively find whatever you want with simple Google search of all your mail.

So now a handful of Gmail accounts, a still-useful and great Fastmail account, my Comcast ISP address, my ND alumni address, never-used Yahoo and Hotmail addresses, and my solusipse.org domain mail all funnel into my single main Google/Gmail account. And, stupendously, I have no spam. Holy Google, Batman.

I also uploaded all my locally archived mail into Gmail so can now retrieve, search, and safely store all my email online.

I really should have done this sooner. And if, for whatever reason, I decide I don't want to use the Gmail interface anymore, I can still get at all that mail via POP or IMAP with a client of my choice. But I don't think I'm going to do that.

Happy Birthday Me.

2008-06-21T14:51:00.001-06:00

June 20th was my 34th birthday. I got a lot of birthday greetings this year, more than usual. This was due to my conscientious coworkers, my increased online presence on several web forums, and certainly not least because of my recent joining of Facebook (lots of happy birthdays there).

We didn't do much for my day, because that's how I like it. Months ago Kris and I went to a nice French creperie, and my only wish was that we go there again, so we did. They have very good coffee, and we also had a nice hummus appetizer. I had a lox crepe, and Kris got stuffed on just their awesome tomato bisque. For dessert we shared (Kris got a couple bites) a Pomme Flambé, or baked apple crepe with brandy, cinnamon, brown sugar, and creme. It wasn't really a flambé, as they didn't light it, but it tasted great.

The creperie is in a nice new mall on the far southeast side of Denver, about 30 minutes from where we live, so we shopped around a little bit afterward. (Really just a little bit. Kris and I are lousy and reluctant shoppers.) There is a very cool Irish pub there too, and I hoped we could walk a bit and then have a nice Guinness. Alas, the crepes and soup had filled us more than I had anticipated and even after a quick walking tour we were still too stuffed to even have a drink. That's ok, I have Guinness in the fridge at home.

That was my plan for the day. My parents gave Kris and me (Kris' bday is August 30th) a Nintendo Wii as an early present, which was a great surprise. I didn't want anything else, but of course my parents and brother couldn't let the date itself go by without something, so my mom & dad are treating Kris and me to P.F. Chang's, the best gourmet Chinese there is, and my brother hooked me up at amazon.com. Awesome, and thanks!

Kris had something for me, too. I really didn't want or expect anything, I feel well past that age, but Kris' gift shut me right up. Like, OMG.

To those who know, That-Which-Is-Labeled-Blue needs no introduction. For those who don't, that's Johnny Walker Blue Label Scotch whisky. Yes, that really is an embossed blue leather case. Blue Label is the finest whisky JW offers, and I've been craving it ever since I got to try it at a JW scotch tasting event. I was not expecting any gifts, and I certainly wasn't expecting this! I'm a hard man to buy for, as Kris has complained. I have either very simple or exactingly narrow tastes, and nothing in between. I love many of the finer things, but it has to be just the right thing, and figuring out exactly what those right things for me are isn't easy. Kris went with me to the Scotch tasting and saw how much I enjoyed the Blue Label as well as experience it herself, which luckily assured her this was the perfect gift. And it is.

I had a glass to celebrate the birthday and the awesome gift. It was excellent, and even Kris who can't stand most Scotch admits it is regal stuff. And then back in the box it goes, to await the next special occasion.

Coincidentally, I received my next Scotch club order the day before my birthday. It's an 18yo Duncan & Taylor Speyside from the Imperial distillery, which is interesting since that distillery does not sell it's own single malt, it normally just supplies the whisky for blends like Ballantine's. It's no Blue Label, but I like it a lot better than the 19yo Glenlossie I got 2 months ago.

California Vacation!

2008-05-26T15:08:00.005-06:00

Finally back from a great vacation in California. It was long overdue. Since starting my current job a year ago I have not taken any vacation time, or even any kind of break (save one extra day off for my wisdom tooth extraction, but that's hardly a vacation or time off). At my previous job I had earned a generous 4 weeks (20 days) or paid vacation time, plus 10 additional routine holidays, for a lot of time off. I was used to taking a few days here, a few there, and still having enough time for a week or two holiday every year. My current job is more moderate in vacation time, and more demanding of me, so finding time isn't easy. I was surprise to realize how long it had been since I'd taken some time or gone anywhere.

I worked Saturday morning and then we kicked off the vacation with a couple hours at a friend's BBQ. I was 'required' to attend the BBQ for my mad mojito-making skillz, which were a hit the last time we hung out with those friends. Our flight out was late, only leaving Denver after 8pm, so we had some time to spare. Traveling late is nice because you can still use the day of travel for other things and only use up your evening. You get in late, but you can just crash and begin the next day already at your destination. Our flight got in at 11pm, my aunt Shiela picked us up at San Jose airport, and we enjoyed a longish 2-hour drive into central CA where she and my grandmother live, and she was gracious enough to put us up at her place. We got in around 1am, but Sheila had been concerned about entertaining us and had used the occasion as an excuse to buy a Nintendo Wii. We (rather, I) had to try it out, so we did that until 3am.

The next day was a nice family gathering with Kris and me, my parents who had already been out in CA vacationing for a week, my grandmother whose 80th birthday was the impetus for the entire trip, and two of three of my aunts. Though still a small gathering, it's significant for the Livingston clan because we are quite scattered and rarely get together these days, across California, Idaho, Indiana, Illinois, and Colorado. Unfortunately, very much missed were my brother Lucas and his fiancé Koren in Chicago, but we'll get to see them soon enough when they wed in November this year.

We spent a couple days visiting my aunts and grandmother in Merced and Atwater CA, and then my parents, Kris and I were off to the coast were we rented a beach house in Santa Cruz. The house was fantastic, newly renovated, and exceeded our expectations. It was hard to tear ourselves away from the house to go to the beach or into Santa Cruz! We did not do a whole lot there, which was exactly the goal of the trip. Too often I have vacationed and returned home more exhausted than if I had just worked instead. Sure, I have loads of memories from many great trips, but this time I wanted to chill, and we did. We had lazy breakfasts, nice lunches on the patio, drinks in the evenings, and even managed to have a chilly but enjoyable evening around the firepit.

We walked a block and a half down the little street to the beach every day and strolled a bit, making sure to at least get our feet wet in the still very cold ocean. I was unprepared for the cool temperature on the coast. Everyone had told me to pack some warmer clothes, but I just nodded and pshawed. It was California! It was already warm at home in mile-high Denver, how could it get colder? Silly me, it did. It was still nice enough to enjoy walking and sitting on the beach, and no amount of clothing would have made the water bearable. The surfers were out in it every day and at all times, but I think there is just something wrong with them.

We toured the trendy downtown area of Santa Cruz and had a good seafood dinner on the wharf out in the bay, but mostly we hung out at the house and the beach and really enjoyed ourselves. Now we just have to figure out when we'll do it again!

California 2008

IT Serendipity.

2008-05-05T20:52:00.003-06:00

This seems really absurdly simple, now that I've stumbled across the solution myself. But then apparently it's not, because I sifted through 100+ Google results on my issue to no avail, with no one in the Bill Gatesian technosphere able to offer any solution. I'll explain...

For nearly a year now I have not been able to run .msi files on my WindowsXP machine. These files are Microsoft's own packages for installing software on your machine. Most installers are still simple old .exe files, with which I've had no problem. But since some fateful day probably well over a year ago, every time I try to run .msi files I get the lovely error "Access is Denied", and cannot install the software.

So I'm not going to run through what I tried. Google "Access is denied" msi install and scan through some of the forum discussions (if you're into such information technology masochism). I did all that. As one can likely surmise from the reams of useless information proffered by the self-styled IT gurus, none if this advise helped me any. I tried a dozen tricks, nothing helped, and the gods only know what I've hurt in the process of fiddling blindly with my machine's code guts.

I don't know what prompted me to do it, but today for some reason I right-clicked a recently downloaded .msi (testing out the a new image viewer, Fastpictureviewer) to see what options I had. I was enticed by the "Open With..." command, the tantalizing suggestion of the ellipsis beckoning me with yet more options. I clicked, and the first option to use in opening the .msi was conveniently, though confoundingly, the Windows Installer.

Strange, why would that not be automatic? It's a Microsoft Windows machine, trying to run a Microsoft Installer, and I have Microsoft's Windows Installer already installed (even 3.1). With what else would I open an .msi? Sure, coders and real IT geeks toy around with .msi files, building and modifying, and I'm sure they use some other application to manipulate them. But do they really rely on the ol' double-click to do that? Does an .msi ever need to be opened with anything other than the Windows Installer on a double-click? I think not. Why oh why would this not just work?

Oh, yeah. I don't have a Mac. Duh.

Ok, so still feeling silly, I select Windows Installer as the application of choice to open the .msi. And it opens. It runs. The app installs.

What. The. Hell.

That's it? That's all it took to solve this year-long techno-conundrum that's barred me from interesting applications? And why did no one else, apparently, on the web come across this?

Well this story never really was a very interesting one, but in the end there's a simple upshot. Sometimes Windows may simply forget what the hell to do with .msi files, and you just have to remind it what to do. If you get Access is Denied errors when trying to open .msi files:

Right-Click => Open With... => Windows Installer.

The Old Fashioned, a Classic Cocktail

2008-04-29T21:35:00.002-06:00

So I'm surfing along and through a little convoluted link-hopping I'm come across what is now of of my favorite new blogs, Urban Monarch. Specifically, the post about today's hot-or-not drinks.

Jager is finally out, unless you’re in high school.

Bourbon, especially small batch is in with a vengence.

The watered down Jack Daniels is washed right out.

Flasks are back in.

Old Fashioneds are in.

Kamikazes are out.

Rye whiskey is trying like hell to come back in, but for now it’s still out.

Jager out? Fine, yech. Bourbon in!? WOOT. Jack out, check. Flask, got mine (it's responsible for me having almost zero memory of my first theatrical viewing of Revenge of the Sith. Remember that Bryan?). Old Fashioneds... what the hell is that?

So, I researched WELL beyond what is reasonable, as I am wont to do when I come across something I don't know about. Thankfully one of my first stops was at the wonderfully and exhaustively informative recipe at Drinkboy.com.

Old Fashioned (c. 1895)

* 1/2 orange slice
* 1 cube sugar
* 2 dashes Angostura bitters
* 2 ounces rye or bourbon whiskey

Muddle orange, sugar, bitters together until the sugar is mostly dissolved. Fill glass with ice, then add the whiskey. Garnish with a marachino cherry, and perhaps an additional orange slice. Serve with a swizzle stick and/or straw

An old (1895 old enough?), traditional bourbon cocktail? Hmmm. The short article piqued my interest and then I read through a couple dozen of the 50+ collected variations on the Old Fashioned Drinkboy cites as historical evidence for their argument that just about every modern bartender's concept of the drink is fatally flawed. Apparently the modern popular variation amounts to a whiskey spritzer, just about equal parts liquor and soda, and by the accounts on those pages is pretty awful.

Simply sifting through the many historical recipes they uncovered convinced me: no soda. 50+ recipes allow for a lot of variation and customization, but the common thread is apparent in all the recipes.

The Old Fashioned is rocks bourbon whiskey, sweetened, with dashed bitters and a twist. Ende.

I am a great fan of simple and strong drinks that are founded upon the natural flavor of the liquor, rather than sickly sweet dramatically mixed concoctions that try to mask the alcohol as much as possible. If I want candy, I'll drink soda. When I drink liquor, I want liquor. The Old Fashioned is exactly that kind of simple, classic, and as unadulterated as possible drink. And it is awesome.

I had to round out my liquor accoutrements with some Angostura bitters, and I also got some orange bitters for fun (the orange is apparently hard to find, but I thank the gods again for my local independently owned Total Beverage which stocks anything and everything I could want). I mixed some straight, some with orange bitters, others with limes, and even had my first Scotch Old Fashioned tonight. As long as I stay true to the spirit of the Old Fashioned tradition, it seems there is no wrong way to do it. Every drink has been different and excellent. Especially loved that Red Label Old Fashioned. Thank the JW tasting for that.

[Edit 5/5/08: ok, the Scotch Old Fashioned is good, but side-by-side bourbon is the clear winner. Still, Scotch is worth trying out at least for the experience, and to put you in the know.]

Summer approaches and for the last month I have been rousing from hiatus my mint julep and mojito making skills, two of my favorite summer drinks. But there's a new kid on the block, and I have a feeling the Old Fashioned is going to be my mixed drink of choice for the year.

[More editing 5/29/08]

After much tinkering (though this simple recipe suffers little variation before becoming something else entirely), I have found my favorite recipe deviates slightly from the original. I haven't modernized too much, mind you. This recipe is a 1904, also from Drinkboy.

Cocktail, Old Fashioned. (c. 1904)

Use old-fashioned cocktail glass.

Sugar, 1 lump.
Seltzer, 1 dash, and crush sugar with muddler.
Ice, one square piece.
Orange bitters, 1 dash.
Angostura bitters, 1 dash.
Lemon peel, 1 piece.
Whiskey, 1 jigger.

Stir gently and serve with spoon.

The real difference is splitting the bitters between Angostura and orange. I mix my Old Fashioneds like this exclusively now.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Could this be the definitive medium?

2008-04-27T15:59:00.002-06:00

Clone Wars Sneak Peak at Starwars.com

EDIT: the full theatrical trailer is available now.

Holy crap. I think Star Wars may finally have found it's ultimate medium to really deliver the universe Lucas envisions.

The original live action films have great character, but when Lucas expanded the epic into mind-blowing pageantry in the latter films the live-action medium fell short. There is just too much disconnect between the awesome special effects and the very ~~lame~~ mundane live acting. When they try to mix it more by digitizing the actors to let them do super feats it's very obvious and becomes even cornier.

That's certainly not most of the problem with the new films, but even if the acting and dialogue had been stellar this hitch would have nagged at me. There are even several scenes in the Lord of the Rings films that irk me because they just look so fake when juxtaposed with the otherwise excellent effects (like when Legolas scales and does acrobatics all over the cave troll in Fellowship and the oliphants in Return).

The Achilles Heel of CGI effects is still the human body. We are all naturally extremely familiar with human movement, and it must be reproduced to perfection to convince us it is real. Despite what one might think, current technology can do that. Actually, 8-year-old technology can do that. Seen Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within? That's from 2001 and is still the greatest testament to CGI animation I've seen. Anyway, I'm sure it just takes a helluva lot of work, and apparently modern movie makers just aren't willing to input the effort. When they skimp, I notice, and it is crappy. If they are not going to make it perfect, then just avoid scenes that require animating live action characters. Work to your strengths, not your weaknesses.

The original Clone Wars animated shorts were awesome. They told great stories, had lots of action and less drama, and portrayed amazing Jedi badassness. One of the greatest strengths of the series was the animated format. The fact that it is animated shifts our expectations so we are not looking for real-world verisimilitude. We are able to suspend our disbelief more than we are in live-action and much more incredible (and unrealistic) events can be portrayed without breaching the medium's credibility. They could literally portray anything and it would be believable in context, because there is no standard for realism or plausibility in an animated world. The Star Wars saga portrays extraordinarily incredible events, and it does so much more effectively in a medium that allows for that.

The only weakness of the original Clone Wars animated series was it's simplicity. The episodes were only about 10 minutes long, and even when strung all together they make for a very choppy and non linear movie. Plus, the very feature of animation that makes is perfect for amazing stunts is also a weakness. No matter it's strengths, animation lacks credibility as a genuine storytelling medium, and with very few rare exceptions anything penned by animators instantly gains children as it's primary demographic, and therefore must cater to them. The original Clone Wars was devoid of the mature-themed action and drama that helped make the Star wars films enjoyable for all ages. I loved Clone Wars, but in the end it was trivial.

I hope the new Clone Wars, which will be computer animated rather drawn, will be the perfect marriage of mature live-action drama and storytelling and amazing animated effects. The preview already is a lot darker than the original Clone Wars, but still showcased a couple scenes of superhuman feats that I would expect from animated Jedi. Also, the lengthier standard tv show time slot will allow more fully developed stories, rather than the action-packed but limited snippets we got from the original Clone Wars.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars, The Dark Knight, and the final season of Battlestar Galactica are the only media I'm looking forward to this year.

Johnnie Walker, Old Friend

2008-04-26T21:22:00.001-06:00

Went to a Johnnie Walker Scotch tasting this week. (Actually, I went to the same event twice!) It was a great free event that included a Scotch cocktail and hors d'oeuvres, followed by a sit-down presentation and tasting of the five big Johnnie Walker blended Scotch whiskies. Not only did I get some great Scotch, I even learned some nifty stuff.

First was the iconic 12yo Black Label. Great, great stuff which I have recommended before, and I learned it is the original JW Scotch blend, and supposedly the same recipe as it was in 1867.

The next was 18yo Gold Label, called the "Champaign of whiskies". I've had it before, though unfortunately not before I'd had a fair bit of other stuff that rendered me incapable of caring about the quality of my libation, so I really hadn't 'experienced' it. The really novel thing was they served it chilled right out of the freezer. I have to say "liquid gold" describes it perfectly. It was really creamy and honey-sweet. I was really impressed and especially happy to be introduced to chilled Scotch.

Then was Red, which is often derided as rough stuff (an it is, though I do drink it straight on occasion), but the JW Brand Ambassador explained that it was not blended to drink straight, it was designed to be mixed. The neat story is that in the late 19th century everyone in Europe drank brandy, and especially brandy cocktails. Then a plague wiped out a lot of the wine grape crop, and brandy is distilled from wine, so there was a bandy shortage. JW stepped in an introduce Red Label as a substitute for brandy in cocktails. They provided us with ginger ale, cola, and ice and let us make our own little mix. It wasn't too bad, though I'm not converted from the good stuff straight up. And if I'm going to have a cocktail, there's a lot of great stuff on my list that's going to beat any Scotch concoction. But it was interesting.

Then was Green Label, the 15yo "pure malt". All the other labels are based on Scottish grain whisky and then layered with select Scotch malt whiskies to produce their exotic flavors. In Green they dispense with the grain whisky and blend only Scotch malt whisky. It has a very robust heavy flavor, characteristic of malt whisky, and is the most powerful of the JW collection. I appreciate the powerful flavor, because that's what I like in Scotch, but honestly through it's very good, for the $60 it costs I can get a way more interesting single malt. I bought it once before, and may again some time in the future, but in general I think for the price it their weakest label.

And then, finally, the clouds parted, the light of heaven shone, and God said "Let there be Blue Label." And there was Blue Label. This is JW's ultimate blend, which they simply guarantee is the greatest blend of the rarest and most perfect whiskies in the world, some as much as 45 years old. They go so far as to blasphemously eschew the industry dogma of age statements and simply say "trust us, this is the shit". And it IS the shit. I was always skeptical of it because it it "just" a blend, including "inferior" grain whisky, and cost $250 or more, how good could it really be? Well I was shocked, it was incredible. It is the most well-rounded and perfectly smooth liquor I have ever tasted. They absolutely did it and I will doubt no more.

They also had a couple limited edition Blue Label releases on display. The first was a King George commemorative made only with whisky from distilleries that operated during the reign of the king, in a crystal decanter for about $600. The second was the 200th anniversary of John Walker's birth, made with only a few of the best whiskies on planet earth, in a Baccarat crystal decanter, for a measly $3500. We didn't get to taste those.

Dental Carnage

2008-04-26T20:17:00.001-06:00

I hate the dentist. So does everybody. But I at least have been lucky enough to have decent enough teeth and have taken decent enough care of them that I have never developed any major problems.

Except a couple wisdom teeth. They have never been a huge problem, just an occasional nag, and finally last week I cracked one. Yeah, that hurts. And hurts. And hurts. So I went to the dentist for the first time in 10 years. Yes I know it's immature to have shirked routine adult diligence for so long, but dammit I don't wanna!

It's all about pain management. The dentist hurts, and they know it hurts, and they know and everyone else knows that's why people don't like the dentist. It seems to me that in addition to simply being a capable practitioner of dentals arts, a huge focus of a decent dental practice ought to be on pain management and patient comfort. People avoid the dentist because it's unpleasant, so wouldn't it be smart business for them to work on removing the obstacles to people giving them business?

I must say my visit went ok, much better than I was anticipating. I got nitrous oxide (by request. It's free on the dental plan, why the heck wouldn't you?), then a healthy dose of Novocain which I hardly felt thanks to the sweet orangey gas, then the doc rummaged around in my most likely drooling mouth for 60 seconds and said I was done. He gave me some quick info about expected bleeding and soreness and was outta there.

My experience was pretty easy, but even the dental assistant remarked I got lucky with an easy extraction. I am an optician in an optometry practice, and visits to my office involve zero pain (other than whatever condition you walk in with, and if you whine about the damn air puff into the eye I'll slap you), yet I think we work a lot harder to make patients comfortable and at ease than the dentist's office did for me.

Maybe it's just the differences between the offices, that I went to a reputable but low-cost regional dental chain, while we are a service-oriented private office and boutique optical, and it's exactly that personal concern for the patient/customer that's the first thing to go out the window when you say "budget". Still, I know we gave good personal service even when I used to work one of the chain opticals.

Or it's because dental service is in such demand they really don't have to care. Everyone needs work done and if every office provides he same level of care and service I guess there's more than enough business to go around and keep even the mediocre places in business. I've been to small private dental practices before, too, and I don't recall them being any better, and in fact this chain company was the best dental visit I've had. But it still seems to me that there is a niche for a more service-oriented practice that caters to patients' comfort from the moment they walk in to the moment they leave, and even follow up thereafter.

But even if such a place exists, I'm not going back again until I have to.

Mere Fanboy No More

2008-04-26T19:33:00.001-06:00

My Scotch fandom has officially elevated to the next level: I joined a Scotch buying club.

I have over the past two years worked through all the reasonable Scotch selections at my liquor mart, and that's a heck of a lot. They certainly have a lot more that I haven't tried but those are in the 20+ year old ranges and carry prohibitive price tags. At that age nothing is less than $100 a bottle, and my store is even very well priced in the market.

I don't in principle have a problem with paying that much, but I don't want to just wade through the costly fair and hope I strike on something that's fantastic. There are oodles of reviews and tasting notes on anything you'll find on a local shelf, but reviews for Scotch are the same as reviews for anything, I find: for every review you agree with, there's another you don't, and in the end experience is the only way to judge.

I looked for "Scotch of the month" clubs and turned up a few decent offerings (though only a very few, which surprised me). Just this month I took the plunge and joined D&M's Single Malt Aficionados' buyer's club.

You commit for a year and are shipped a club-selected bottle every two months. They offer two clubs, the Aficionados' and the Connoisseurs', the former with a maximum bottle cost of $119 and the latter slightly less at $95. Aficionados' selections are typically 20-30 years old (though a few 18+ creep in occasionally), and Connoisseurs' hover around 15-18 and seem to max out at 20 years. All the Scotches offered by the club are far below market value, and many are bottled specifically for and only available to the club.

This seems like a sound idea and a great opportunity to get a hold of some really rare and old Scotches I would otherwise never have any hope of attaining. It is still a gamble, as I never know what I'll get ahead of time, but I hope that over the year the few slackers will be more than made up for by some incredible scores. The list of past offerings is full of 30 year old whiskies, which retail for $200+, and even a couple of those in the year will make up a lot of slack.

I got my first bottle. It is, of course (curse my fortune!), one of the aforementioned slackers. Well, it's not really a slacke r. It is an 18 year old (1988) Gordon & McPhail Glenlossie, cask strength, and the oldest Scotch I've yet owned. I'm actually having a dram right now—just to make sure I give it a fair shake. There's nothing bad at all about it, it's just not my favorite style and not the kind of really rare old selection I was hoping for.

D&M's tasting notes:

Scents of fresh smoky heather along with spearmint and a touch of lemon zest. Chewy malty flavors, soft with a touch of white pepper and a kiss of heat. Hints of lemon zest throughout on a silky texture. A touch of sea salt towards the finish keeps things interesting.

The "soft touch of white pepper" is more like a slap in the face, those hints of lemon zest are on a texture of razor blades, not silk, and I totally miss the desirable sea salt. It's just me, I'm sure, and perhaps I'll get accustomed to it. It is cask strength, which means it's bottled straight from the oak barrels in which it aged for 18 years, without being cut with distillery local water to bring it down to the standard 43% ABV of Scotch. It's 56.3%, and you can drink it like that, but the alcohol will overwhelm your senses and make it hard to get the full flavors. Maybe I'm not adding enough water to bring it down to a sensible level, but when I add plenty it tastes too weak. I guess experimentation will tell.

(Apologies for the pathetic images. I had no digital camera on hand and apparently my 1.3MP phone camera can't focus worth a damn.)

I'm looking forward to building a collection of nice whiskies to have on hand, so that on any given day, or should I have company, I have an nice range from which to select. If this club turn out nicely, perhaps I'll join the other as well to fill in the off months and maintain a steady monthly supply of fine Scotch whisky. I'll let you know how it goes.

On Zombies

2008-03-14T13:02:00.001-06:00

Zombie maestro lays down the lore, BBC News (via thinkpol)

I was excited about the new Romero film Diary of the Dead and saw it recently. Not very impressive. Not the worst of the five-film mythos, though, that goes to the previous Land of the Dead. That was bad.

Diary wasn't zombie enough. It was too preoccupied with Blair-Witch-Projecty collegiate angst and social commentary on modern media. The gore was disappointingly minimal. Maybe Romero learned too much of a lesson from the Land fiasco, because that film was just a lame B-plot zombie flick with no script quality, and Diary seems too be a failed effort to make a great quality script + zombies. Unfortunately it's too heavy on (poor) script and too light on (mediocre) zombie action, leaving both independent film dorks and zombie horror geeks wanting.

Horror vs. Slasher

"That's where the applause comes from in my films - good zombie kills!" -Romero

Sorry George, but in my experience the greatest applause comes from good human kills. With few exceptions, we don't empathize with zombies so there is no horror in their destruction. There is certainly fascination with the mechanism of death, but it's really just good fun when zombies are destroyed. The great kills, for cheering or for horror, are when the humans fall prey to zombie depredation. There's always the bastard human everyone hates, and the highlight of the films are when these guys become zombie-jerky. Then there's the inevitable sympathetic character kill, when we mourn (a little bit) for the loss of a good character.

That, in my mind, is part of the distinction between horror films and merely scary or slasher movies. Real horror exploits emotion to create truly gut-wrenching and horrendous scenes, often difficult to watch (and I can only imagine how difficult to film), and their value lies in the psychic trauma they inflict. Slasher films focus on merely on body counts with spectacular death scenes that are often as comedic as they are scary.

I've always though Romero's films danced at the border of horror and slasher, and the best films like Dawn of the Dead did it very well and delivered the goods to both horror and slasher fans, and even squeezed in some respectable social commentary to boot. That was a big part of the problem with Diary: really lame human (and zombie) death scenes, and none of the characters were interesting enough to inspire sympathy or even hatred. I cared no at all when they died off, and the film probably would have ended better had everyone died. It didn't deliver the horror, because you couldn't develop enough connection with the characters to care if they lived or died, and it didn't deliver the hallmark Romero outrageous deaths. Too bad.

Zombies Reinvented

I understand the complaint about running zombies was directed specifically at the Dawn of the Dead remake that trampled his shambling corpse paradigm with fleet-footed dead, but I can't help feeling this is a swipe at all depictions that depart from mobility-challenged undead. George, don't even rip on 28 Days/Weeks. 28 Days Later didn't invent the speedy zombie (I believe that credit goes to the hilariously awesome 1985 Return of the Living Dead), but it put it squarely into the popular conscious. The film reinvigorated the zombie genre, which had gone underground through the 90s, and it's success finally got Romero the funding he needed to do Land and Diary. I believe Day of the Dead would still be the last Romero zombie film were it not for 28 Days.

What Romero owes to 28 Days aside, it and the sequel 28 Weeks Later are excellent films, and true horror films. There are no ludicrously convoluted deaths, and no hilarity when people or 'zombies' die. The films inspire a fantastic moral sickness in me like few other films ever have, and that's what horror is about.

Run, Zombie, Run.

Solus | Ipse

Terminator Salvation not the definitive film it was intended or touted to be.

Dial2Do is the free version of what Jott should be.

This is the standard Dial2Do screen. Every service I use is immediately available and all message counts clearly labeled.

The contacts screen is perfectly intuitive, as it should be.

A very clear enumeration of your added services, and exactly what to say to activate them. On Jott one just said the name of whatever service it was, but it often failed to understand and couldn’t differentiate between similar names.

New Love for Rye, and the Logical Conclusion of the Sazerac

Comcast 50Mbps broadband is a 500hp engine with a 3-cup gas tank.

360Desktop Solves My Media Center Control Issues

And the Award for Best PC Media Remote Goes to… the iPod Touch

First Foray into Home Theater PC

50% of Charges Against Pirate Bay Dropped

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