For now, I just wanted to note I have blended my review methodology (The Richter Scale) from this site on the other site in reviewing several Barcelona restaurants:

Txapela
Iggy
El Choquito Restaurante
Brasserie Flo
Barkeno Cocina Mediterranea

Once we overcame the Vista difficulties with the assistance of Planetwide’s excellent technical support service, we played with the software a bit to see what we could do. You start off by selecting a format for your comic book using supplied templates, most of which focus on letter size pages. I also came across a template editor written by CBC fan Jesse Pavel (see here) and I understand other templates can also be purchased from Planetwide Media.

Once you have your layout - and you can include pages with other template types in your comic book, incidentally - you’re ready to start adding content. CBC2 comes with a limited range of clip art to use as the basis for a comic book, but allows for the import of art via a variety of file formats, including JPEG format. You can then use various tools in CBC2 to add text boxes, speech bubbles, effects, and more.

My son’s first thought was to combine CBC2 with his obsession with Bungie’s Halo 3 on the Xbox 360. thanks to the ability to do screen captures from the instant replays in Halo 3, he was able to script a complete story idea and then capture the individual frames which I then helped him download from the Bungie web site. We then imported the screen captures into Comic Book Creator 2, and he applied speech bubbles and more to produce his first comic book - all of which took less than an hour once he had all the parts in place. Below is a sample page from the comic book he made (you can output the comic book to PDF, incidentally).

Sample Comic Book Creator 2 output using images from Halo 3

His next thought was to use Lego characters as the basis of another comic book, so I helped him set up a “stage” and he took pictures of the “action” he had scripted for his next project. Again, we imported those photos into CBC2, and he made his second comic book (excerpt below).

Sample Comic Book Creator 2 output using staged Lego characters

Bas is a bright kid, but Comic Book Creator 2 was a rather inspirational tool for him. He proceeded to make another couple of Halo 3 comic books to share with his friends over the course of the afternoon. We had some problems printing out the comic books, however, as the software would not allow us to print double sided on the double sided color laser printer we have here. We had to resort to outputting to PDF, and then printing from Acrobat to get double sided printing to work, and getting PDF output to work under Vista was initially a challenge because we didn’t know we had to run the program as Administrator (right click on the program on the desktop, click Properties, then click on Compatibility, and then put a check mark in the box that says to Always Run As Administrator).

That same night we celebrated a friend’s birthday at a local restaurant, and Bas’ idea was to give her a comic book of her birthday dinner, so we both took lots of pictures, and the next morning he whipped up a Birthday comic book, an excerpt of which is below.

Sample Comic Book Creator 2 output using photos from a birthday dinner

You can also add sound and video to comic books created with Comic Book Creator 2, and at the time we played with the software, it was also possible to upload comic books to a dedicated comic book web site which appears to have since morphed into something called MashOn and the original content we uploaded seems to have disappeared.

If making your own visual content is not your thing, Planetwide Media also sells licensed art in the form of bundled versions of Comic Book Creator. The licensed art includes material from Marvel, Virgin Comics, Speed Racer, National Geographic, and even Manga from TOKYOPOP, among many others. Each of those packages include the full release of Comic Book Creator 2, and you can use all the clip art, screen shots, etc. to make your own comic books. If you have multiple sets of source art, you can reference them all from one installation of the software as well. My only complaint about this packaging approach is that I would like to see a version of the software which has only the licensed art and not the software, under the assumption that it would be less expensive than having to repurchase the program yet again. The tutorials imply this might be the case, but I was unable to find purchasable content on the web site.

Comic Book Creator 2 is definitely a creativity inspiring program, good for all ages of users who want to be able to present their ideas in comic book layout form. The results with CBC2 are only limited by one’s imagination and able to create/find the base content.

I give Comic Book Creator 2 a 7.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale. That score could be improved if pre-developed content - more types of speech bubbles, clip art from a variety of sources, etc. - were more accessible, and if more templates, like for a standard 3-up newspaper comic format, were provided with the base software. And finally, the printing problems we encountered, while not insurmountable as we found a workaround, should not have existed in the first place.

Of the more than a dozen PCs in regular use in our home and office, only three run Microsoft Vista, and they create daily administrative agony for our IT manager (that would be me). Software doesn’t run properly unless you’re set up as Administrator, and even then there are problems. Running files off our file server is problematic without further changes, network file copies are horrifically slow, the user interface requires re-learning, and the list of Vista woes goes on.

In short, Microsoft Vista is the bane of our networked computer existence here at Richter Scale central. So much so that when I was shopping around for a new ultra-portable notebook last month, I ended up foregoing the Sony TZ series I really wanted and instead chose the Fujitsu Lifebook P-8010, primarily because I could get it shipped to me with Windows XP instead of Vista. And I couldn’t be happier with that decision. Windows XP just works - it’s fast, efficient, stable, and not prone to ever constant security pop-ups.

While I can understand that Microsoft wants to sell more copies of Vista, efforts to force Vista down the throats of folks who don’t want to use Vista are not going to win Microsoft many friends. In fact, if my discussions with others who have problems with Vista are any indication, it means that there will be a lot of folks not upgrading their Windows XP-based PCs for a long time to come, if but only to avoid having to downgrade their Windows experience to Vista.

If you believe, as I do, that Windows XP needs to stick around as a supported and sold operating system, it could not hurt to make your voice heard by signing the Save Windows XP Petition.

The library of music content at Amazon is very extensive, with even brand new content available upon release by the record labels. And the prices aren’t too bad either - generally cheaper than the same music at iTunes, especially when you buy music by the album. I found album prices running from $7.99 to $9.99 typically.

To download a purchased album in MP3 format you need to install a small program from Amazon which actually performs the download, and, as I understand it, tags the MP3 files as being sold to you as the purchaser (presumably so that if you share them they can tag you for it). The Amazon MP3 downloader also lets you specify where to store the downloaded music, and you can also tell it to automatically add the newly download music to your iTunes or Windows Media Player libraries (but not both).

All the MP3s are encoded at 256Kbps, and sound great. Definitely a painless way to download music with no restrictions on your personal use of the files, unlike original iTunes songs. And, you can run the MP3s on any music player, whereas even the DRM-free iTunes downloads need to be converted into MP3 from Apple’s proprietary AAC format first.

As for video downloads, Amazon offers their Amazon Unbox service. This, sadly is DRMed, which makes it a pain to use, as you cannot convert the downloaded video into an MP4 file that you can play on an iPod, among other restrictions. Also, Unbox content is limited to either the machine you download the video on (for rentals) or you can designate two machines for “purchased” (not rented) content. Unbox works only on Windows-based PCs or on TiVo devices with current firmware.

Prices are the Amazon Unbox service are on par with iTunes - TV shows for $1.99 typically, and movies for around $9.99-14.99 (purchase) and less if rented. And, of course, some content not available at iTunes is available for legal downloadable viewing via Amazon Unbox and vice-versa. For example, we found Battlestar Galactica Season 4 on Amazon Unbox after not finding it on iTunes.

As with the MP3 downloads, the Amazon Unbox service requires the installation of a program on your PC. That program acts both as the video player and downloader, and does a pretty decent job. Visual artifacts in BSG4’s first episode were negligible on our 61” DLP display, and sound quality was excellent (and appeared to offer surround sound queues to our receiver unlike our experience with iTunes content on the Apple TV). Also, with at least the BSG4 shows we downloaded, we were able to start watching before the entire show had downloaded, so less planning required. We haven’t tested it with movies yet, and there doesn’t appear to be a separate category for HD content either.

The Amazon Unbox service, in addition to having less content (at least for what we’re interested in at this point), also has very strict requirements with respect to country of download. While iTunes lets a user with a U.S. billing address download content no matter where they happen to be in the world at the time of download, Amazon Unbox is very specific about the fact that downloads are only possible while physically in the U.S. This is similar to the restrictions imposed by the various TV networks on viewing past TV shows.

As I’ve stated before, I’m not thrilled with DRM because it makes you dependent on the vagaries and policies of the DRM provider, and you could well find yourself cut off from your content one day because of that. However, where it relates to content I am likely to only use once, like TV shows and movie rentals, I have less of an issue with it. I listen to my music library daily, so that needs to be DRM-free, but video does not - and if I want to watch a particular movie in the future, I can either buy it on physical media or rent it again.

I give the Amazon MP3 download service a 9.0 out 10.0 and the Amazon Unbox service a 7.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale. The only way I can see to improve the Amazon MP3 service is to have a more complete library of all music and audio content available (some of the music I was looking for was not available in MP3 form, but they do have an excellent collection). The Amazon Unbox service needs more content, including HD content, and less restrictive use of content - I’d like to be able to play it on my iPod and not have to have a “Plays For Sure” compatible device (which Unbox does support for purchased content).

The Apple TV was a breeze to install, as I opted for the direct-wired Ethernet connection instead of connecting to my slower WiFi network. The iTunes software installation on my notebook immediately recognized the Apple TV and started moving content over to it as well.

One glitch I ran into was that the iTunes synchronization did not copy my entire music library over to the Apple TV unit - only the last week’s worth of new music (courtesy of Amazon’s MP3 download service, which I like better than that of iTunes). Turns out the only way to force the copy of all my music over to the Apple TV was to highlight my entire library and “mark” each item (via the right-mouse-button context menu). Once I did that and resynchronized, everything moved over properly.

Video playback on the Apple TV is pretty good for regular TV shows - I have it connected to a 32” LCD panel via HDMI, and the visual compression artifacts were negligible on episodes of New Amsterdam, Reaper, and Supernatural. We also took advantage last night of the ability to rent and watch high definition (HD) movies, selecting Jodie Foster’s The Brave One as our test subject.

The movie took about 5 hours to download over our 2MBps connection. We had purchased it on Saturday evening in order to view it Sunday night, so the download time wasn’t a problem. It should be noted that some TV programming can be watched a minute or two into the download, instead of having to wait for the entire show to download, by the way.

The HD quality of the rented movie was very good - I could not discern any artifacts. The only disappointment other than the weak ending of the movie itself was that there was no embedded surround sound in the film. I don’t know if this is a normal situation or limited to just the movie we selected.

All the ordering and downloading can be done directly via the Apple TV, or also on the associated PC running iTunes. And you do need to have a Mac or PC to get the Apple TV running, incidentally. To order via the Apple TV, just enter your iTunes account information and password via the cool little remote control.

The cost for the HD rental was $4.99 ($3.99 for the non-HD version), which allows the movie to stay on your Apple TV (the only platform it will play on) for up to 30 days, and once you start watching the movie, you have 24 hours to finish it. Not unreasonable considering you don’t have to drive to the rental store to get the movie, but more expensive than a service like NetFlix if you’re an avid movie watcher.

From our perspective, it’s a lot cheaper than buying the movie on Blu-ray Disc, especially considering it wasn’t that great a movie (although Jodie Foster’s performance was pretty good).

The Apple TV, in addition to being a music and video jukebox, also offers photo storage and a related slideshow mode, and also has a YouTube viewing option where you can look at the most recent, most viewed, most popular, and searched for YouTube videos. Nice distraction, although it also serves as a reminder of how inane 99% of YouTube content can really be.

The current price of the Apple TV 160GB model is $329, and you must have a usable Internet connection, a local area network, and iTunes-capable personal computer to make it work.

My only technical annoyance with the Apple TV hardware is that is on all the time, and it runs hot. You can shut down (i.e. put in stand-by) the video output section (which is a major heat generator) of the Apple TV by pointing the remote control at the Apple TV, and then holding down the “play” button for six seconds, but this was not documented anywhere obvious. I stumbled across this tip during a Google search about the subject.

In terms of content, iTunes has a great selection of movies and TV shows, but frustratingly iTunes does not have everything I want to watch - shows like Battlestar Galactica Season 4, Private Practice, Torchwood, Pushing Daisies, Dexter Season 2, and Dr. Who were all not available, for example, requiring me to resort to Amazon Unbox or BitTorrent feeds.

I give the Apple TV a 7.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale. It would rate higher if it were more eco-friendly in its power consumption and if it had greater content selection.

The above image is composed using the bark of a coconut tree, flower blossoms (including that of a Plumeria/Frangipani on top), and shells of small cowries found while wandering the beach, as well as a cork we found). The result is our Tropical Christmas Tree.

With that, we’d like to wish you all (early) a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Jake, Linda, Krystyana, and Bas Richter

One of the many different (from Bonaire) and new (to me) creatures I found underwater were lionfish. I saw two different species here, one of which was the Fijian Spotfin Lionfish. The colors and textures of the fish were so impressive that I felt inspired to create a new piece of art in honor of that lionfish (see above for what I came up with).

My Fijian Spotfin Lionfish art will be made available later this month as a limited edition print both in our soon-to-be-completed gallery on Bonaire as well as on-line via http://www.RichterArt.com, in a series of only 25 numbered pieces.

Print number one of those 25 was auctioned off at a fundraiser at the Castaway Resort for FJ$425, with all proceeds going to the Mamanuca Environment Society - an environmental non-profit looking to protect Fiji’s reefs and nature. The Jones family of Singapore, bless their generous hearts, got the top bid.

That site is located at http://www.TheTravelingRichters.com. Please check it out.

All travel related posts and reviews that would have otherwise gone here in this blog will now appear there. I will continue posting technology comments and reviews here, however.

There are about 80 other people in line with me and my daughter, and I
am pretty sure I am the oldest human here (at 43). It’s all a pretty
sedate crowd too.

No one is wearing Master Chief uniforms or looks (much) like an alien.

About half the folks are using some sort of electronic gadget to keep
themselves occupied with the tedium of waiting in a non-moving line,
myself included since I am typing this post on my phone.

Ah, and now excitement mounts, kind of - we just got the 10 minute
warning.

I must say that the last Harry Potter book launch I went to was more
fun. At least we had wizards, witches, and Harry Potter clones present.
And there was much more squealing too.

I hope playing Halo 3 will be more fun than waiting to buy it. Wouldn’t
be hard. At least I know a little of what to expect, as I got a private
demo of Halo 3 from Bungie back at E3 in July, and played the
multiplayer Beta…

Update - 2007-09-25 @ 1:10AM: The line processed quickly and we were out the door with a couple of copies of the regular Halo 3 at ten past midnight. Glad we didn’t manage to pre-order the Legendary Edition - it would not have fit in our carry-on luggage.

This parallels similar club access already offered to higher level AMEX card holders for Continental, Delta, and Northwest airport clubs.

Kudos to AMEX and AA for working this one out (although I already have my lifetime Admiral’s Club membership, so it doesn’t do me much good). Unfortunately, the new relationship between AA and AMEX does not extend to transferring Membership Reward points into the AAdvantage frequent flyer program.

In any event, as an AMEX card holder, I was surprised to learn about this by accident, so I called AMEX customer service and was told they themselves were only notified of the new benefit last night, and that AMEX is planning on sending a letter to Platinum and Centurion card members later this month, and then doing a major public roll-out in October. Talk about a soft opening. Kind of like doing previews on Broadway, I guess.

More information on this new AMEX card member benefit is located here (courtesy of the Dallas Morning News).

I’ve used the IPTV & CAM Anywhere Deluxe on and off for the last few months and find it an interesting product. I have also seen a number of features added and fixed via the built-in automatic update system (very convenient).

Because the IPTV & CAM Anywhere Deluxe includes the “MY-IPBOX TV&CAM - USB 2.0 TV/Video Capture Device & PC Camera” - a piece of hardware with a TV tuner and built-in WebCam - let me start with this box. First, in order to use both the WebCam and TV tuner functionality, you need two free USB 2.0 ports on your PC, as all of the functionality is exposed through server software running on the attached PC. The box also features a port for allowing composite or s-video input (and sound input), as well as cable TV input. For my testing I used the cable TV connection, as well as both USB cables. That, incidentally, required an inexpensive cable TV splitter. The actual device is pretty small, and when the attached PC is powered on, thus providing power to the device, a bright blue LED is visible in front.

Software installation was relatively painless, although I found a system reboot was required. I did have some issues with configuration at first because the software was using the TV tuner already installed in my PC, but after I changed that in the software configuration, all was good with the TV server. The TV server software and WebCam server software are separate applications but can be run concurrently. Both require the use of a login if you want to be able to access the TV playback and WebCam views from the outside world, and part of the IPTV & CAM Anywhere Deluxe package includes a code key to allow you to register for this login ID and on-line service via the web site at http://www.my-iptv.com. This integration with the web site also allows for configuration settings (like channel names) to be accessed remotely.

The initial version of the TV tuner server software did not properly allow me to auto-scan my available channels, but a later software update appears to have resolved this issue handily.

Viewing the TV output on a remote system requires installation of an 11MB “player” application. That too was simple and easy, and once I identified my server using the login ID and password, I was connected. Included is a very cool “TV surfing” feature, which goes through each channel, grabs a screen shot, and then creates an array of these images for a visual channel menu. It took about half a minute to create for the 30 or so channels my cable system here on Bonaire has. And TV viewing (with sound) worked just fine. There is presently no DVR (digital video recorder) functionality built-in - i.e. no ability to rewind live TV, but there is a recording capability available, and if you reside the U.S. and have a ZIP code and standard cable TV provider, you can use the My IPTV web site to select programs to record on a single program basis. I did not find any sort of “Season Pass” capability to allow me to record all programs of a particular title like TiVo or Window Media Center offer. And unlike Windows Media Center, you cannot edit the channel listings or assignments - probably not important to the average user, but those of us in places without ZIP codes need that feature.

You can also apparently burn recorded TV programs onto DVD, but I did not test this feature.

The only real issue I had with the IPTV & CAM Anywhere Deluxe was that on the Windows XP system I installed the server software on - and note that the PC and server software must be running to allow remote viewing - the sound of the TV program was always audible. Other than muting the system sound entirely, there was no way to turn off sound output for the IPTV server software so that I could use the PC to listen to other audio without sound “collisions” (interference caused by multiple sound sources being blended). I am told by Honest Technology that under Window Vista this is not an issue - only under prior versions of Windows, such as XP. What this means is that you should not run the server software on an XP equipped PC that will be in use by others in your household while traveling and enjoying remote TV viewing. I do see the reliance on a running PC as being an added imposition, mostly because of the additional power consumption and the unreliability of Windows over long periods of time, but I also understand the necessity, as otherwise this would be a much more expensive product (like the Slingbox).

The WebCam feature is pretty simply to use. The WebCam server supports the integrated WebCam in the “box”, as well as up to two other WebCams, all connected to the same PC via USB connections. That limits the distance the WebCams can be located away from the PC, and in practice, I suspect most people would not use more than one or maybe two WebCams. For my test of the WebCam server I placed the IPTV/CAM box in my living room (attached to my HP Digital Entertainment Center PC), pointed the box at the couch, and then used the integrated WebCam both to keep an eye on my kids in the living room while I was in the office, as well as letting their mom and grandparents in New Hampshire observe them. All they needed to do was login to the My IPTV web site and select the MY-IP Cam option, and voila, they could watch the kids be couch potatoes too. The only thing I needed to do was open up a port on my router to allow the outside world to connect to the PC where the WebCam server was running. This same router configuration also appears to have allowed the remote TV viewing to work.

The tiny little camera in the box provided reasonable enough clarity, and worked surprisingly well in low-light conditions (when the kids were highlighted only by the light from our big screen TV). It took the kids a while to figure out that I could see them from my office, after which they took to covering the box with a hand towel to avoid parental monitoring.

The IPTV & CAM Anywhere Deluxe package is pretty good deal for someone who wants to have both remote TV viewing and WebCam monitoring of the area near their PC back home (or in the office), especially consider the price of $130. You’d pay that or more than that annually just for TiVo or other integrated EPG service. Having the system require an operating PC is the biggest drawback I see, and mostly from a reliability perspective, because if there’s a power outage back home (or a Windows crash or hang) while you’re traveling, you might need physical involvement to restart the PC. Then again, we’ve had the Slingbox hang as well, requiring a power cycle to be done manually.

I give the IPTV & CAM Anywhere Deluxe a 7.5 out of a possible 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

I finally got the package in recently and the family and I settled down for a viewing, and found, yes, that the footage was incredible, but equally incredible was the horrific amount of shimmer and static noise that appeared in many scenes. I was appalled that what was being called the HD experience to beat all HD experiences could look so absolutely horrible on screen.

I was playing the disc on my Sony PS3, connected to a 61” Samsung DLP 1080p display, on which most everything else has looked pretty darn good.

And the noise was not limited to just the first episode, but each of the episodes I watched. The noise really ruined the viewing experience for me. I did some digging on-line, and found lots of discussion of the subject on various web sites - I was not alone in my static noise! But I then stumbled across a suggestion that it could be the display system used, and not the discs. I was skeptical, as I saw reports from many folks who had all sorts of different 1080p HD displays - not just Samsung, but it encouraged me to try an experiment.

Samsung offers something called DNIe (Digital Natural Image engine) on many of their displays, including the high end DLP displays I have been using from them for several years. DNIe pumps up color saturation and detail, and typically works very well to produce an even nicer picture. But, as it turns out, DNIe was definitely my noise culprit. Take a look at the images below:

Using the DNIe Demo Mode for Comparison

Close Up View of DNIe Comparison

As you can see from the above images, DNIe (on the left side of each image) darkens the shadows of these mountains in Venezuela (episode 3 - “Fresh Water") and then sharpens the noise to create an amazing amount of speckling. Any user of Photoshop will also recognize the effect here - it’s like using the Sharpen filter too many times on an image. The right side of each of the above images shows DNIe turned off. This DNIe comparison mode is a feature of the Samsung TV to try and convince people to use DNIe for viewing their programming.

Well, in the case of Planet Earth HD, DNIe is not recommended. It ruins the picture. I now wonder if some of the speckling I have seen in other HD programming is caused by DNIe or as part of the native imagery from the source HD-DVD or Blu-ray Disc. I know that film grain is certainly more apparent in HD, thanks to a demonstration Sony gave me back in January of Black Hawk Down on Blu-ray Disc - they showed me the original production tape and the BD version side by side, and the grain was identical. But DNIe could exacerbate the grain noise. And now I know to try watching with DNIe turned off to see if it makes a difference.

I suspect that other brands of HD televisions also have a feature similar to DNIe, and I would advise those having visual noise problems with Planet Earth or other HD content to try turning off that feature and see if it helps.

With my newfound knowledge in hand, I can finally watch my Planet Earth Blu-Ray Disc edition with pleasure and enjoyment. But also a little sadness as the HD versions of Planet Earth do not include the bonus features from the standard definition DVD release, including extensive footage of how some of the scenes were shot - something I particularly wanted to see in the case of the Great White Sharks jumping out of the water when feasting on seals off South Africa.

I give Planet Earth on Blu-Ray Disc an 8.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale (it could have been higher had the extra footage not been omitted).

UPDATE - June 11, 2007: I discovered that DNIe kept being reenabled on my TV, 30 minutes after I would turn it off. Turns out my Samsung TV was in “Shop Mode” - a mode for when a TV is on display at a shop, where it resets various settings, like aspect ratio, DNIe, etc. to defaults to overcome the effects of a consumer having twiddled with the settings and leaving them in an indeterminate (and maybe ugly) state. To turn off “Shop Mode”, power on your Samsung TV, and then hold the Menu button for about 5 seconds until the screen flashes. Note also for the Samsung TVs on which DNIe cannot be turned off, you might be able to get the same result by changing the video picture mode to “Movie” from “Dynamic”. 

The book is called The UnDutchables, and it’s a humorous dissection of Dutch culture as well as the drivers and motivators behind observable Dutch behavior.

While The UnDutchables has an obviously strong link to mother Holland and activities there, and is intended primarily for English speaking expats living in The Netherlands, I have found that many of the examples apply equally well in the Dutch Caribbean. We have Dutch friends on Bonaire, as well as on neighboring Curacao and Aruba, and boy, does this book nail some of their traits to a tee! And some of those behaviors have rubbed off on some of the Antilleans we know here too. If only we had had a copy of this book 10 years ago, we might have dealt with certain situations better!

The authors also have a web site - http://www.UnDutchables.com - to accompany the book. Ironically, the book is also available writtin in Dutch to help so-called “Cloggies” understand their fellow “Kikkerlanders”. The Dutch friends who gave us this book found much of the content to be dead-on accurate (and funny) as well, incidentally.

Highly recommended with a 9.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

I wonder if and when a similar book, written in Dutch, about Americans, will be produced to help the Dutch understand our frailties, foibles, and motivations?

Dragon’s Lair was effectively an interactive cartoon, where at particular (and frequent) points you needed to use a joy stick and indicate which direction the protagonist - Dirk the Daring - should go in order to avoid impending doom. You typically could choose one of four (or less directions) for Dirk to “move” at these decision points.

Dirk about to die

Doom is pretty much what always befell my attempts to play through the game. I lost a lot of money (gaming privileges meant early access, not free play, alas) on Dragon’s Lair. I have always blamed my poor performance on the lag in response of the joystick - not an unreasonable excuse considering that Dragon’s Lair was based on a laser disc and the joystick controlled a decision tree, and it would take finite amount of time for the disc head to get to wherever the next scene needed to come from, be it a death scene like the one above, or a rare (in my case) continuation of the game. Mind you, it’s quite possible the lag was human lag, i.e. mine, but I’d never admit that in public.

I never finished Dragon’s Lair, but did always consider it a standout at a time when arcade graphics were blocky, and even the PC games at the time that I developed were not particularly attractive (although there was less game play lag). Dragon’s Lair featured cel-based animation by famed animator Don Bluth, digitized to laser disc. Big visual difference to pixel-based gaming. At the time, and for years to come, Dragon’s Lair was the closest thing to wide spread “3D” gaming arcade game players experienced, even though the subject was actually flat (it was a cartoon, after all) and all motions and paths were fully predetermined - you could only choose which of those predetermined paths to follow.

Some years back, Dirk was repurposed for a couple of different and more dynamically interactive Dragon’s Lair games for various consoles - game play was moderately fun, although my then eight year old son enjoyed the games more than I did.

But Dragon’s Lair has returned to its optical video medium roots. A couple of months ago, I received a pre-release of Dragon’s Lair on Blu-ray Disc. The kids and I played with it extensively - they greatly enjoyed the Dad-induced death scenes, while for me it brought back the humiliation of defeat. And this time, perhaps, it was human lag (at least to some extent) that was the cause of death as we played the game on our Sony PS3 on our 61” DLP 1080p screen. The game would have been well-nigh impossible to play with the PS3 controller, but using the optional Sony PS3 Blu-ray Remote control it worked out moderately well - except for my accidentally hitting “Stop” and having to start the game all over again, multiple times. Dragon’s Lair on Blu-ray Disc will play on any Blu-ray Disc player which supports BD-J (which should be all of them).

It was entertaining while it lasted, but I found the non-linear play of Dragon’s Lair frustrating. Let me explain that. If you are really good at Dragon’s Lair and never fail, there will be some sense of linearity from one scene to another (or at least it will appear that way), but if you cause Dirk to die, as I am wont to do, then Dirk resurrects in some random location, making it seem like you’re jumping all over the place all the time. I’m told by the folks at Digital Leisure that the original arcade version worked like this too, which is perhaps something I blocked as a painful childhood memory.

The manual I received with the Blu-ray Disc version also made reference to a visual cue appearing on-screen at a time when a decision needed to be made, but that never happened during our game play, and I was later told this is for the HD-DVD version of the game (even though the manual was Blu-ray Disc specific). However it was a pre-release, so that may have now been corrected.

For anyone who was a big Dragon’s Lair fan, or just wants to play a video game on their non-game console Blu-ray Disc player, Dragon’s Lair on Blu-ray Disc will definitely provide entertainment and nostalgia. I did go through a bit of nostalgia myself, but mostly about how easy it was for me to get Dirk the Daring killed during my gameplay (see image above for reference).

I personally found myself yearning for some fragging on Halo 2 or playing some current next-gen gaming titles with a more explorable world after a period of playing Dragon’s Lair. Perhaps I’ve become spoiled, but to me Dragon’s Lair seemed antiquated compared to modern console gaming. But perhaps new gamers will appreciate the novelty of this approach more than I.

I give Dragon’s Lair on Blu-ray Disc a 5.5 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

Dragon’s Lair on Blu-ray Disc is available for $49.95.

Dragon’s Lair on Blu-ray Disc

View from the new Bonaire Pier ReefCam

View from the updated Bonaire Wreck ReefCam

The new Yellow Sub PierCam

The above are images from these various cameras. The Pier ReefCam is an interesting design. I used a waterproof NTSC bullet camera (so named because of its shape), encased it in resin, protected the cable with an off-the-shelf garden hose, and then mounted it on a 2x4. It’s not pretty, as seen below, but it gets the job done.

The new Bonaire Pier ReefCam

Live images from these cameras can be found at http://www.BonaireWebCams.com.

I have since returned the DocuPen, but with a bit of remorse. Not because I was putting it to ample use (I only used it for testing, and nothing more), but more because I keep thinking I might need it at some point and miss having it available for some special occasion.

The $299 DocuPen RC800 looks like a pen on steroids, although perhaps the term “wand” might be more appropriate. The DocuPen needs to be bigger than a pen though, so it can scan an 8.5” wide piece of paper in one pass. The DocuPen is lightweight, has an integrated battery, takes microSD cards for memory storage, and pretty easy to use.

To use it, you press one of the buttons on the device, use another button to cycle through your scanning options (black & white or color; resolution; etc.) and then slowly drag it across the surface you want to scan. It doesn’t have to be a paper - it could be a painting, a poster on a wall, or any subject that is flat and smooth, in any orientation (horizontal on a table or the ground or vertical on a wall, for example).

The maximum speed of dragging is determined by the amount of data being scanned - color, high resolution scans necessarily take longer than low resolution blank & white scans. The number of pages of scans is also determined by the content, as well as the size of the memory card installed in the device.

You can transfer the data from the DocuPen to a PC using either the included super-mini USB cable (smaller than mini-USB) or by removing the memory card and using the supplied external USB reader to read it. I had problems doing the latter on a system without the proper DocuPen software installed even though, theoretically, the memory card should show up as a memory device, but it was also easier to just plug in the cable instead of remove the memory card).

Scans were of good quality, and the software supplied by Planon simple to use. A copy of PaperPort was also included in the distribution I received.

Another cool idea was including something along the lines of a universal charger in the box (which is a nice metal box, incidentally). You use a wall outlet to charge a small battery pack and then use the battery pack to charge the DocuPen. It sounds a bit odd, but once I had this explained to me by Planon’s staff at CES, I was up and running. The box also includes a few additional charger tips for other popular portable electronics devices.

Overall the DocuPen RC800 is a nice, well-featured product.

But, being in my office most of the time, I found my Fujitsu SnapScan to be so much more convenient to use that I never used the DocuPen outside my testing, which reminded me that each thing has its place in the world, and for me, the DocuPen was not an office scanning tool.

What the DocuPen RC800 color is, is an on-the-go scanning tool, and hence my remorse. I’m going on several multi-week trips with my family in the coming 12-18 months, in some cases to rather remote locations (no so remote there’s not a real bathroom present, but remote enough that technology to scan may not be readily available. And in those cases, the DocuPen may well come in handy. Although, even that said, I have found it relatively easy to take digital photos of documents, plaques, etc., for later use. The resolution of a digital camera is not nearly as good as that of the DocuPen, but convenience is an issue.

Even so, the DocuPen RC800 could still have a place - albeit a small one - in my carry-on, just in case.

In conjunction with the ramp up for Halo 3, the open multiplayer Beta of Halo 3 kicked off today. For those who had early access, there was a patch issued this morning for the game - content unknown (at least to me).

Incidentally, I did notice that in single user (non-splitscreen) mode, I was getting full width display this morning (in contrast to my observations in the post below about Halo 3 using a smaller screen size, at least in dual-user mode). Game play also felt more responsive than previously, but that could just be luck of the draw with respect to hosting servers at it having been 5am EDT that I was playing the Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta.

The Beta ends on June 6th, so those of you able to participate should do so soon. If you don’t already have a Beta access key or method, then Microsoft kindly reminded us this morning that it’s still possible to buy Crackdown, another Xbox 360 shooter game, to get access to the Halo 3 Beta. Nice of them to offer that (and sell more copies of Crackdown, of course).

On a related note, Microsoft will also be cross marketing Halo 3 with a Halo 3 Edition of their Zune media player. That will be available as of June 15th for an estimated retail price of $249, exclusively at GameStop.

The kids and I have now spent a few hours with Halo 3, to mixed reviews. The Beta of Halo 3, which consists of a 941MB download, only features three levels (but so far we’ve only managed to play two of them - no idea what the third level looks like), and is only playable via Xbox Live - you need an Xbox Live Gold account to use it.

It’s also possible to play split-screen with a second local player in one of the training modes offered through the Xbox Live set-up. Playing with more than two local players in an on-line game is not enabled.

The Xbox Live live lobby set-up is a bit tedious, as you spend precious minutes waiting to fill out a roster of six players, although if six players are not found after some time, the game will start with less. We also found that a number of times the screen would blank out during play, and then inform us that the system was uploading (not sure what it was uploading), and after about a minute game play would resume - it appears this happened when existing players dropped out, so perhaps it was a swap to a new server to continue the match. The other thing was that on-line game response was all over the board for us - mind you, we’re down in the Caribbean, and have a not insubstantial delay (80-100ms) for data traffic to most U.S. servers - but in some sessions things were responsive, while in others it felt like we were in a small time shift. In the “slow” games it was well nigh impossible to beat down an opponent unless you struck before you reached them, which in turn assumed they were not also moving. Very frustrating.

Halo 3’s graphics are a definite improvement over those of Halo and Halo 2 played on an Xbox 360, but that’s no surprise considering the game is designed for the Xbox 360’s graphics engine, which is a real improvement over that of the original Xbox. However, the graphics are not nearly as good as I had imagined them, perhaps being jaded by things like Gears of War. The other odd thing is that although I have my Xbox 360 set up for 1920x1080 resolution, Halo 3 plays at a reduced horizontal resolution (closer to a 4:3 aspect ratio than the 16:9 my display is configured for), resulting in a lot of visual real estate that is not even put to use. I hope the released version of the game will allow for proper wide screen aspect ratios.

Controls are a bit different too, in that the Right Button on the Xbox 360 controller is what is now used to pick up weapons, ride vehicles, and reload (for Halo 2 it was the X button). The X button now allows you to drop and deploy special objects you pick up along the way, such as the bubble shield (protects you from attack outside the shield but opponents can still walk through the shield and nail you), a gravity lift (emits a blue anti-grav beam you can ride up one “level” of height - can also be used to upset vehicles when they drive over it), and an energy drain bomb. You can only carry one special object at any one time.

Weapons have changed a bit too, with the addition of a red laser gun, and the ability to remove a mounted machine gun from its post and walk around with it - albeit much more slowly. Existing weapons also respond a bit differently in terms of power and control.

Having played mostly Halo 2 in the last 18 months on the Xbox 360, I was not able to draw real comparisons to the original Halo, but my 10 year old son claims (and this appears to be backed up by comments in other media sources) that Halo 3 is more similar to the original Halo than Halo 2. He wasn’t able to quantify his observation. As he put it, “it just is”.

The Halo 3 Beta has been mostly enjoyable so far, but it seems to me that the folks at Bungie still have a ways to go to make game play smoother and more engrossing. But that’s what a Beta test period is all about - get the software tested, get bugs and usability feedback, and hopefully release an improved product. I personally am looking forward to the campaign mode and hope it is better than that in Halo 2, which was disappointingly short and simple compared to the original Halo. We’ll see later this year what Bungie actually delivers.

This past New Year’s Day pot-luck marked our 22nd year of having an annual pot luck event. It first originated as the Wing-Ding-A-Thon (due to my addiction to Buffalo Wings) held each October starting in 1985 for a few years, and then evolved into the “Yeah! It’s Summer Party” (and potluck). That continued until 1997 when Linda and I moved to Bonaire. The first year the party was held on January 1st was in 1998, and it has continued to be held that day without fail, even when we had to struggle to get back on-island in time to finalize our shopping for the party, or when, like in 2006, I had to leave early the next morning to attend a conference in the U.S.

Our lives have slowly been changing, and with a recent decision to home school our children starting this summer and Linda’s recent knee replacement surgery, we find ourselves in need of some other changes, among them ones which include the flexibility of possibly missing our first Bonaire New Year’s Eve in the coming year or two because we’re off doing something interesting and unusual with the children in some exotic location.

We figured it would be better to give a lot of advanced notice on this subject since there are folks on BT and elsewhere that have planned their vacations to Bonaire in order to join us on that nice day. Bless them.

We have enjoyed the company of many of you, both at the potluck as well as various BBQs we hosted over the years, never mind dinner’s at Gibi’s and elsewhere, but it’s time for us to move on from the big party into a more sedate socializing mode, like small dinners out.

We are also looking forward to opening a small private art gallery in our home here on Bonaire to show off Linda’s and my art and will have small wine & cheese-type gatherings there on occasion between travels and other commitments. Construction is going on as we speak - see the image below from our private WebCam:

Jake’s Construction Cam

At some point we may resume some sort of annual event, but until we fully understand and embrace all the challenges of schooling both kids at home (which we expect to take the equivalent of at least one person working full time) we are hesitant to make any further or future commitments to a regular event like that now.

Our apologies to any folks that have already made plans, but if we’re home on January 1st, feel free to drop in and say hi but don’t expect a party to be going on

The original plan had been to visit Tokyo for a full week of both sightseeing and business prospecting, and then head home to Bonaire. However after I had already made all my plans I was informed I needed to go to Taipei, Taiwan, for a business meeting, right in the middle of my Tokyo stay. That basically ate almost 3 days out of my Tokyo plans, but it turned out to be a fun adventure.

For two of the two and half days I spent in Tokyo, I hired a private tour guide, Junko Matsuda, to take me around. Junko, who runs Jun’s Tokyo Discovery Tours, had been recommended to me by someone at http://www.FlyerTalk.com, and what a treasure she was! If anyone wants a personal tour and explanation of everywhere and anywhere in Tokyo, consider hiring Junko - she can be reached by e-mail at me2@gb3.so-net.ne.jp or phone at +81-3-5477-6021 (or mobile at +81-90-7734-0079). In the links below to my photos, Junko is the Japanese woman that appears in them with some frequency. I also gave her a camera to use during our tour to take photos of me (since I rarely ever appear in photos as I am always taking them).

I also hired another set of guides - Naoto Nakamura and Eizaburo Yoshino (see their page here) - as part of a group tour of the famed Tsukiji Fish Market. As my body had not yet adjusted to the time zone, a 4am meeting for that tour worked out fine, and we had only one other participant on the tour. The fish market tour was excellent, with both Naoto and Eizaburo highly knowledgeable of the workings at the fish market.

I spent nearly a full day in transit between Tokyo and Taipei and back for a 1 hour meeting, but we (my friends/business associates and I) had a good local guide in our off time in Taipei, and got to visit Taipei 101 (the tallest building in the world at that time) and a Taipei night market, as well as several local dining establishments where we feasted on all sorts of delights, including pig’s intestines (tasted a lot better than it sounds).

I am nearly a half year late getting the 946 hand-selected pictures from my travels posted on-line because I had grand aspirations of annotating each one of them with a description.

I was off to a good start (see here and here) using the Photo Gallery software that came with my blogging system, but the scope of the effort, which involved both getting the photos to the right size as well as upload and annotate them, quickly overwhelmed me. I got about half way through my first full day in Tokyo doing that (again, look here and here) - so only about 150 photos out of 946 annotated.

But with a holiday weekend on Bonaire this weekend, and the mostly enjoyable use of Adobe’s Lightroom software, I decided to make simple web-based photo galleries instead and finally get the photos where folks could see them before they became too outdated. They don’t have any contextual annotation other than camera and exposure information, but hopefully those viewing the images will enjoy the subjects almost as much for their sheer interest (and in some cases, beauty or novelty) without the commentary I have not had time to add.

Here are the links to the photos:

- Traveling From California to Tokyo and Arriving in Tokyo - December 2-3, 2006

- Touring Tokyo with Junko (Asakusa, Kitchen District, Akihabara, Imperial Palace, Ginza) - December 4, 2006

- Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo - December 5, 2006

- Taipei, Taiwan with friends/business associates Eric, Isabelle, Bryan, and Ivan - December 5-6, 2006

- Return from Taipei to Tokyo (Roppongi) followed by another day in Tokyo with Junko (Harajuku, Meiji, Shibuya, War Memorial) - December 7-8, 2006

If you have any questions about any of them, give a link to the photo in the comments on this blog entry with your question, and I will answer you.