Webkit

There are a few major shifts in Steam technology required to make a native client on a Mac. One of those is Webkit support since Internet Explorer’s rendering engine on the Mac hasn’t been updated since version 5. Webkit, for those unaware, is the same rendering engine used in both Safari and Google Chrome. This is a major bonus for both the Mac and Windows gamers out there. We’ll finally have a decent browser experience within the Steam client. Very exciting stuff.

OpenGL

OpenGL is the most obvious required change as Microsoft shows no interest of sharing the DirectX API with any other platforms. OpenGL means the Mac will be rendering all of the Steam games using an open standard rendering engine. Yay! More standards! This also means that we are one step closer not only to a native Mac client, but also the greater potential for a native Linux client as well.

Linux Client

Ok. I won’t get too far ahead of myself. There’s still quite a bit that needs to be considered before a Linux client can be developed. The source code would need to be modified to include support for various Linux distributions as well as Windows and Mac code. This is not an easy task as any cross-platform developer will tell you. Linux is incredibly diverse and there are far more obstacles to overcome than that of Windows or Mac. But at least we are a couple steps closer.

A Small Plea to Valve

I’m incredibly excited for this new release. It’s been a couple months since I’ve powered on my Windows machine for some good ol’ fashioned gaming. Partly because I see it as such a huge inconvenience to start up another system just to play games. This could certainly change my gaming habits for the better. But there is one thing that could hold me back and other Mac enthusiasts just a little. The User Interface.

Brian and myself talk often of how awful the UI is even on the Windows platform. I can forgive the breaking of Microsoft UI standards just because it’s such a common practise in the Windows world and nearly every app breaks the UI standards, but on the Mac it’s a very different story. Application developers and users of third party applications really take pride in showing off Apple UI standards and how pretty and uniform everything is.

Valve could really drop the ball on this native Mac client if it doesn’t look like it belongs on my Mac. I hope that they understand this is a major part to the success of any application on an Apple platform. There’s a reason I feel an aversion to any Adobe Air applications on my system. It’s because they really don’t feel like they belong. They look weird don’t perform like a regular Mac application is expected to.

So please Valve. A small plea. Please try to follow current Aqua User Interface guidelines and keep to Cocoa as often as is possible. The Mac enthusiasts would really appreciate it.

Update

It has been brought to my attention that I’m even more out of the loop than I previously thought. After examining the beta on my Windows machine, it turns out that Webkit has already been implemented and the UI has been refreshed and is looking great. Though, I must point out it still doesn’t conform to any UI standards, so I’m a little concerned with how this will look on feel on a Mac, but I am hopeful.

A Declaration of the
Independence of Cyberspace

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don’t exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are based on matter, There is no matter here.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.

In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States,you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.

Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

February 8, 1996

It’s been a while, so here’s a quick run-down at the end of the series. Cameron relinquishes her chip to John Henry who then travels into the future as he is no longer tethered to the basement. Upon discovering this, Catherine Weaver (Terminator) and John Connor travel to the future as well leaving Sarah Connor behind much to John’s dismay. Of course, time travel fanatics will note several issues with this move. I’ll just go through a few of them that I’ve noted of particular issue.

Heard Of John Connor?

After donning the coat of Kyle Reese, John meets Derek Reese who tells him that he does not know him. He also states that John is about to become famous for wearing Kyle’s coat. Tho gravity of this short dialogue is really powerful. John Connor is unknown in this future. He is not the leader of the resistance, he does not command troops. He is a nobody. And so is the legendary Sarah Connor. This carries more than a few problems with it. But one of the big ones will be how to convince Kyle Reese to go back to the past to protect Sarah Connor and father him.

The next interesting tidbit was the allusion that Kyle Reese might be the prevailing leader of this resistance. It doesn’t exactly sit well with me. Kyle was always an unremarkable soldier. And for him to carry this position of power instead of his older brother raises many questions.

Sarah Connor

It has been postulated that Sarah Connor may have managed to survive through Judgement Day and is still living in this future without her son. Waiting for him to return and undoubtedly telling wild stories of how her unknown son will save them.

How this would complicate matters further for John having a mother that was crazy in the past and even crazier in the future is an interesting concept, but undoubtedly makes John’s journey to leadership more difficult.

Skynet

Perhaps the biggest complication of all is the fact that John Connor is no longer a target or threat for Skynet. How does this affect timelines or other aspects of time travel? Even if Kyle Reese could be convinced to go back in time to protect Sarah Connor, would she even need protecting? I’m not sure how this works. The TV series certainly toyed with the notions of conflicting and alternate timelines. But nothing to this extent.

Another oddity was the new origin of Skynet being Danny Dyson. A peculiar twist. If my dad was killed by a woman claiming that he was the reason for the apocalypse, I’d be pretty damn sure that I wasn’t going to follow in his footsteps. Especially after seeing several terminators in my present.

John Henry

This character was immensely intriguing as a robot tethered to a basement who played children’s games and had a part of his consciousness roam the internet for information. His apparent purpose was a means of combatting Skynet, though I have no idea how one reprogrammed Terminator body intends to fight off an entire race of machines. Especially in a world where his main asset (the internet) no longer seems to exist. This needed a lot more explanation I thought.

The Right Move

It occurs to me, that perhaps the network made the right decision in cancellation. There was an incredible amount of story that needed to be explained and much of the initial premise of Terminator seemed to have been thrown out the window.

I still loved this TV series and enjoy musing on the idea of a third season and what that would involve, but after considering all of the possibilities, I can’t help but think that it would have disappointed.

On a related note, happy birthday John Connor.

He pointed out an interesting blog post by Nat Friedman regarding his playnice tool that scraped MobileMe information for the iPhone and pushed it to Latitude. However, Binks offered the idea of using the GPS data from the jailbroken application, Navizon which supported Fire Eagle. Then the data could just be scraped from Fire Eagle through a convenient API and pushed to Latitude without the hassles of paying for MobileMe and violating Terms of Service with Apple.

It all sounded pretty simple. Unfortunately, when I looked into Navizon, I discovered that they have been having trouble lately with the Fire Eagle API and have since discontinued that feature. This left me with only one option: revert to MobileMe and scraping data in the hopes that Apple didn’t make things any more difficult. So now I have a MobileMe account and playnice is running on one of my servers updating my location on Latitude after it scrapes new GPS data. The question now is what’s next?

Use Cases

I’ve thought of a few use cases for this data aside from Latitude updates. However, many of them were borderline stalker tools. One that wasn’t a terrible idea was providing the location data as a service for close family members who don’t use Google services. Ideally, it would be a custom built web application hosted on our home servers so that only they could access the information.

There are so many poor weather days during the winter where you wonder how much longer someone will be on the road until they’re home. Or even when someone is out late and you wonder where the party crowd has led them off to. This kind of service would be ideal when you can’t get someone on the phone, but you know they have it with them.

I considered making this data publicly available through my own domain, but I’m not sure I’m quite willing to be that public yet. Maybe I can find a way to obfuscate the data or make it less accurate. But for now, I think I’ll rely on friends finding me through Latitude as opposed to any other custom service I build.

What are your thoughts? How would you make use of this data? Who do you share it to and how public do you decide to be?

Suffice to say, I’ve experienced The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in nearly every medium it has been presented under many different working hands. So when I heard that Eoin Colfer would be writing a sixth part to the trilogy by the name of And Another Thing, I didn’t feel the apprehension and concern that many of the fans of the books did.

Before I get into the review itself, I will just preface this by acknowledging the fact that I read the audio edition narrated by Simon Jones, the actor of Arthur Dent in both the radio dramas and the TV series. This certainly helped bridge the gap between Douglas Adams’ style and Eoin Colfer’s style in a way that only a man who has been as involved as Simon Jones has could.

The Story and Style

Throughout the first few chapters, I wasn’t really paying attention much. I was just content to be spending time with these characters I loved. The direction or purpose of the book wasn’t really of immediate consequence. After my giddy delirium subsided, I started to notice and even appreciate the subtleties of detail that Colfer was adding to the work. It genuinely felt like he was channeling Douglas Adams. On more than one occasion I forgot that it was even a different author. Colfer really did a spectacular job at adapting his own writing style to better fit Hitchhiker’s.

At least at first. As the story continued and developed, it seemed as though Colfer was beginning to feel a bit more at ease and began to take some liberties with the style. Guide interventions became more and more frequent to explain throw-away jokes. This was not unheard of in previous Hitchhiker books, but the frequency of the story interruptions really began to be aggravating.

Another small thing that bothered me was the minor updates to the explanation of the sub-etha waveband to better fit todays description of what the internet is. I found this to be really unnecessary. It’s not as if the internet wasn’t around when the first books were written, and the sub-etha really didn’t need any extra explanation or detail.

The Characters

As I stated before, when I started the first few chapters, I was just so happy to be with my good friends Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect again. Colfer really did a great job at transitioning the characters into his book. So much so, that I often wonder how much work Adams had already spent on drafting concepts for this book.

It’s obvious that Colfer starts out very strong and then unfortunately loses a bit of perspective along the way. By the end of the book, I found myself thinking of a couple people, like Trillian and Zaphod as entirely separate characters than what they had started out as. Sure, there were similarities and idioms inherent to their character, they just lost something during the story. That little bit of magic that Adams could lend to them that Colfer couldn’t.

Conclusion

Even with the faults I hold to it, I think Eoin Colfer did the series as much justice as could be hoped for without trying to do a reboot or rewrite anything that had happened. It is a tribute work that reminds us all of the fantastic talents of Douglas Adams.

And Another Thing is a worthwhile read for those of you who crave more time with some of the characters and want some new adventures. It won’t be for everyone. It’s especially not for the “die-hard” fans of the books, but I have to say that I enjoyed my overall experience and I’m happy to have it in my collection of Hitchhiker mediums.

It’s such a minute detail, but I love it so much. A non-invasive little electronic knocking sensation on your mobile.

A small note to any Firefox users: I am not trying to shut you out and only render videos for Chrome and Safari. I just haven’t worked out some video conversion workflows yet.

For your convenience and enjoyment, I’ve taken a sample and created it into a rather crude iPhone ringtone. Hopefully there will be better sound samples to pick from in later episodes.

As an aside, does anyone else find the Caprica poster image of Zoe a little perverted? Or is that just me? I know Alessandra Torresani is 22, but she’s playing a character that’s about 16/17 at best.

Naturally, I do what many do in my situation; I download the desired TV show via BitTorrent, extract a series of RAR archives that are frustratingly tedious, then meticulously rename the file with my own preferred naming structures and file it away in my archives until the Blu-Ray becomes available.

Tedious to say the least. And up until recently I dutifully took to the task every night one of my beloved programs aired. A few weeks ago however, I got the idea that I could script the entire process to automate it. These are the scripts I’ve both written and found to mix together a perfect cocktail of BASH, PERL and PYTHON to automate my entertainment system.

Transmission

Transmission is a fantastic, minimalist, cross-platform BitTorrent client with low memory usage. It is also highly scriptable which makes it particularly of use to me as I have added support for both watch directories and a download completion notifier.

Flexget

FlexGet is a multipurpose automation tool for content like torrents, nzbs, podcasts, comics, etc. FlexGet is able to handle different kinds of sources like RSS-feeds, html pages and even csv files, just to name a few.

Having a torrent watch directory is nice, but it’s also kind of useless without a way to automatically add torrents to the watch directory. Flexget allows me to do that with a great deal of ease. My own configuration file is available below to show just how easy it is to work with. Flexget makes use of YAML for easy to read and understand syntax.

feeds:
  tv:
    rss: REDACTED
    series:
      - the big bang theory
      - castle
      - caprica
      - dexter
      - house
      - dollhouse
      - chuck
      - futurama
      - true blood
    download: ~/.config/transmission-daemon/watch/

tvrenamer.pl

A spectacular little script written by Robert Meerman that analyzes TV show filenames and will rename them according to your own preferences. My preferred options for the tvrenamer PERL script are below.

perl tvrenamer.pl --include_series --pad=2 --gap=" - " --scheme=SXXEYY --postproc="s/(\A)([a-z])/\u\1\l\2/g" --unattended

This string of options will automatically check a folder named according to a TV series such as “Dexter” and will proceed to parse every file within that folder and rename them as such: “Dexter – S04E09 – Hungry Man.mkv”

This is such an incredible time saver for those as meticulous as myself. So now that all the pieces of the puzzle are there, it’s just a matter of putting it together.

BASH scripts

So all of the above is great, but it’s still not as simple as firing up Boxee and hitting play when the download completes. I still have to grab the file from my remote server, then run the tvrenamer.pl script and file it away in the library folders for Boxee to pick it up.

The script below grabs the files from the remote server upon completion where they are stored in a single file.

#!/bin/sh
scp USER@REMOTE-SERVER:~/downloadme ~/Downloads/
ssh USER@REMOTE-SERVER 'rm ~/downloadme'

while read line; do
    scp -r USER@REMOTE-SERVER:~/Downloads/$line ~/Downloads/Torrents/Incomplete/
    cd ~/Downloads/Torrents/Incomplete/
    rar=$(find . -name "*.rar")
    unrar x $rar .
    moveme=$(find . -name "*.mkv")
    mv $moveme ~/Downloads/Torrents/Sort/
done < ~/Downloads/downloadme

sh tvsort.sh

rm ~/Downloads/downloadme
rm -rf ~/Downloads/Torrents/Incomplete/*
rm -rf ~/Downloads/Torrents/Sort/*

As referenced by the above script, tvsort.sh is shown below and takes care of calling tvrenamer.pl and sorting away the results.

#!/bin/sh
IFS='
'
cd ~/Downloads/Torrents/Sort/

regex[1]=$(ls -1 | grep -e "^[Tt]he[.|[:space:]][Bb]ig[.|[:space:]][Bb]ang[.|[:space:]][Tt]heory") #The Big Bang Theory
regex[2]=$(ls -1 | grep -e "^[Cc]astle") #Castle
regex[3]=$(ls -1 | grep -e "^[Cc]aprica") #Caprica
regex[4]=$(ls -1 | grep -e "^[Cc]huck") #Chuck
regex[5]=$(ls -1 | grep -e "^[Dd]exter") #Dexter
regex[6]=$(ls -1 | grep -e "^[Dd]ollhouse") #Dollhouse
regex[7]=$(ls -1 | grep -e "^[Hh]ouse") #House
regex[8]=$(ls -1 | grep -e "^[Ff]uturama") #Futurama
regex[9]=$(ls -1 | grep -e "^[Tt]rue[.|[:space:]][Bb]lood") #True Blood

series[1]="The Big Bang Theory"
series[2]="Castle"
series[3]="Caprica"
series[4]="Chuck"
series[5]="Dexter"
series[6]="Dollhouse"
series[7]="House"
series[8]="Futurama"
series[9]="True Blood"

echo "hello"

for (( c=1; c<=9; c++ ))
do
    cd ~/Downloads/Torrents/Sort/
    
    series_name=$(echo ${series[$c]})
    
    i=$(echo "false")
    
    for i in ${regex[$c]}
    do
        mkdir -p ~/Downloads/Torrents/TV/"$series_name"/
        mv ${i} ~/Downloads/Torrents/TV/"$series_name"/
    done

    s=$(echo $i | grep -o "[sS][0-9][0-9][eE]")
    s=$(echo ${s:1:2})

    if [ "${s:0:1}" == "0" ]
        then
        s=$(echo $s | tr -d '0')
    fi

    if [ "$i" != "false" ]
        then
        cd ~/Downloads/Torrents/TV/"$series_name"/
        perl tvrenamer.pl --include_series --pad=2 --gap=" - " --scheme=SXXEYY --postproc="s/(\A)([a-z])/\u\1\l\2/g" --season=$s --unattended
        
        array=$(ls -1)

        for k in ${array[*]}
        do
            perl prowl.pl —apikeyfile=".prowlapi" --application="Lain" --event="TV Sorted" --notification="$k"
        done

        mv * /TV/"$series_name"/Season\ $s/
    fi
done

Prowl

Last, but not least, is Prowl. Prowl was initially designed as a Growl plugin for the iPhone push notification system. A way of forwarding event notifiers from a Mac to your iPhone. However, an API now exists for Prowl which makes it far more compelling to write your own notifications for Prowl outside of Growl.

You may have noticed the PERL script prowl.pl within some of my above code snippets. These pieces are the bits of flair that really make me giddy. When all of these scripts are triggered by CRON and begin to due my bidding, Prowl indicates the progress level along the way and finally let’s me know when it is ready to watch.

Taking it Further

Pretty cunning, dontcha think? And while this does make my life considerably easier, I’m certainly not done yet. As I stated earlier, I do buy all the Blu-Rays for my TV shows and there is still a considerable amount of automation left to uncover in the ripping of those discs.

I’ve become obsessed with the idea of automation and you can expect at least one follow up post on the subject. Finally, if any BASH gurus would like to offer further suggestions on optimizing my rather rudimentary scripts, please do advise in the comments.

If you’re wondering what happened to Alpha and Beta, they do exist. They’re just so unpolished that they’ll likely never see the light of day ever again.

I’ve been working on this theme for months now. Development has only been active for the last month or so, though planning and initial sketches began last summer. Suffice to say I have put a lot of thought into this theme and I’m very happy with the results. Happy enough that I want to share this theme with the rest of the world.

Features

There are a few things that really make this design unique. The most obvious of which would have to be the featured image that accompanies each post.

This is achieved by my own invented algorithm that disects the content of each post and picks out the prominent keywords to perform image queries. When a suitable match is found, the image is cropped and then automagically added to the metadata of each post.

Ok, I lied. That’s nonsense. It’s actually controlled by a Custom Field labelled “Feature” where the user inserts an image url (1024×450px) that will then be used as the featured image. Not as clever, but every bit as beautiful.

Other features involve awesome webkit transition effects for those using Safari and Chrome (and Firefox just as soon as they perfect their special sauce). Sure, these effects could be duplicated with some clever JavaScript libraries, but I really hate embedding JavaScript in a web design and increasing page load times for all that nonsense. CSS3 effects just make more sense.

I also made use of a plugin developed by Michael Weingaertner which modifies the structure of the default Wordpress <!–more–> link to give the bottom of pages a bit more flair as well.

Legal

Because this is a public theme, it’s the first time I’ve ever had to consider licensing. Because I’m such a fan of open source, I decided to licence this theme under Version 3 of the Gnu Public License (GPL).

As for this particular website, I’ve also decided that from this point on, all content published by myself and commentors on this blog will be placed into the public domain. This will allow for legal mash-ups of content and other fun stuff should the need ever arise.

Updates & Changelog

This is version 1.0 and even though I don’t anticipate other major iterations and versions, there will be active development on this theme as with most open source projects. Therefore, those interested in the project status and contributing to or modifying the Gamma theme should consult the GitHub changelog where the project is hosted.

How to Install

Duh. This is nothing new for any of you, I’m sure. But on the off chance that this is the first theme you’ve ever installed in Wordpress, have a look at the Wordpress codex for a tutorial.

Oh, and do yourself and the rest of the Internet a huge favour; Please run the latest version of Wordpress. Keep yourself secure.

How to Use

Using Gamma in your Wordpress site is made rather easy with the incredible options page that comes with this superb theme.

Simply navigate to the options page when the Gamma theme is activated on your site and tweak settings like your logo image, the author’s social networking sites and Google Analytics tracking ID.

It is also expected that each of your posts make use of the <!–more–> tag. This is not entirely necessary, but it does make for a rather dashing footer on the home page.

Download

I’ve provided several packages of downloadable content to best fit everyone’s needs.

A standard zip archive for easy upload and extraction into Wordpress is available for those that want to get started right away. However, those that want to stay up-to-date with all the latest revisions and updates have the Git repository available to them through GitHub.

Finally, for the graphic designers amongst us, all source image data is available in yet another separate package. Tweak channel information and curve values to your hearts content.

Gamma repository hosted at GitHub.

FAQ

Why doesn’t it load properly in IE6?

Seriously? I disabled the stylesheet for IE6 visitors so I didn’t have to bother with all the crazy hacks for PNG fixes and so on. I’m sorry if you’re at work, but there’s no real excuse with Google Chrome Frame to have to put up with IE6’s shit.

Why aren’t pages supported?

I do eventually plan on integrating this, but it never made it into the first release as I didn’t have much of a need for them within my own site.

Can you design a site/theme for me?

Sure, just wire the first $10 million to this account number… All kidding aside, I am open to the idea of creating websites and themes for others, but beware; I’m very picky about what I work with. Email me and we’ll see if we’re right for one another.

Feedback

I welcome any and all feedback. If you have an idea for a feature you’d like to see added, or a gripe about the way something works (or doesn’t work), leave a message in the comments or send hate mail to gamma@niamu.com.

Let’s get some things cleared away. This is a ninja movie. Did anyone else forget what they paid for when they walked into the theater? Many other critics seemed to expect a thought-provoking plot and eloquent dialogue scenes. This is a little baffling. It’s as if some critics were complaining about the lack of explosions in a romantic comedy.

As a last disclaimer before we really start talking about the movie, you could slap the Wachowski name on just about anything and I’ll love every second of it that much more. I still maintain that The Matrix trilogy is a phenomenal cinematic masterpiece that is far too often dismissed. So just be aware that some aspects of my review may be much more glowing than others.

{ IMDb: 7.4/10 | Trailer }

Opening Scene

If there is one thing that most every critic agrees upon, it’s the opening scene to the movie. Dazzling, dark, ominous and it really sets the bar high for the rest of the film.

The first nod of many to previous Wachowski works came in this scene where we see Randall Duk Kim as a tattoo artist for some largely unimportant thugs. For those that don’t recognize the name, Randall Duk Kim was The Keymaker in The Matrix Reloaded. And, true to all his other notable work, his character suffers through a rather painful death. This man knows how to sell a death scene.

After an incredible display of bloodshed and helpless gunfire, the expectation of what’s to come will leave you leaning on the edge of your seat. At least until we’re introduced to the Europol agents.

Europol

After an action-packed opening you’d probably be ready to dive headlong into a ninja dojo. Alas, you’ll have to put up with some dreary Europol agents discuss the ridiculousness of thousand year old ninja clans that carry out assassinations.

The purpose of these characters is somewhat lost on me. The movie plot could be just as solid without them; Orphan ninja betrays his clan and is hunted down for revenge while he seeks his own vengeance on the clan. Simple, but very effective for the genre.

Unfortunately, we have Mika Coretti (Naomie Harris), a Europol agent, who ends up caught in the middle of the fight between Raizo (Rain) and his clan members. This could almost be perceived as an attempt to humanize an otherwise heartless ninja warrior, but the awkward romance in the midst of Raizo’s back story would solve that just as well on it’s own.

I really could have done without the Europol story. It doesn’t add much more than a helpless girl scared out of her wits who relies on a deadly assassin to save her life.

Ninjas and Weapons

One aspect of the movie that simply does not disappoint. Let’s face it, we’re all there to see some bad-ass ninjas wield swords, kusarigamas (chain-sickle), ninja stars and the occasional kung-fu. Every actor on-screen absolutely delivers this in a quality you’d expect from a Wachowski film and an unexpected quality from Rain.

The Wachowski’s are possibly the only American film producers that can bring eastern culture to North American film while remaining respectful and still keep things awe-inspiringly cool. If you’re at all a fan of ninjas, this film will certainly be a treat for you.

CGI Blood

This is just a quick gripe of mine that you can feel free to skip over, but many critics are complaining about the copious amounts of unrealistic CGI blood. The fake blood didn’t bother me at all. I could tell there was something off about it, but certainly not enough to take me out of the moment. After all, this is a ninja film. I’m here to suspend my disbelief in favour of a damn good time.

Oddly enough, not one film critic had a problem with the fact that the ninjas could heal themselves with weird hand gestures and the bizarre looking effects that result. Though I’ve never seen rapid healing done well.

Rating

Story: 4/10

The ninja backstory wasn’t all that bad, save for an out-of-place love story. Granted, this love story sets up our characters motivation and drives much of his actions, but it needed a lot of work. The Europol agents, on the other hand, could have been scrapped entirely. These characters are a waste of film and slow down the pace of an otherwise very entertaining action flick.

Picture: 7/10

Some dark action scenes are sometimes tough to decipher, though there’s light where it counts and I never felt lost in the frenzy of clanging swords and piercing ninja stars. The movie shows you exactly what you need to see to understand the scene. If things are tough to see sometimes, it’s because they’re gorram ninjas! There’s no lack of lighting and flair when the time is right to show off an epic duel.

Sound: 9/10

The sound design is superb. Ninja stars whiz by your head and swords and kusarigamas clash and slice with a terrific clarity. The only downfall in my eyes was the poor soundtrack and unremarkable score.

Acting: 7/10

Certainly of the genre and it knows who the audience is and what to sell. Still, the cliché dialogue and whispery ninja voices got old after a while. However the raw skill and ability demonstrated by Rain and the rest of the cast of ninjas was more than enough to make up for those minor annoyances.

Bottom Line

See this movie if you’ve got a couple hours to kill and want a good time. Don’t try to look for deeper meanings or a greatly fulfilling story. This is a movie for action flick fans (and Wachowski brothers followers). Anyone seeking anything else from this movie should steer clear.

I know many of you will have Wave accounts at this point and have most likely grown a little bored of the service and have gone back to tweeting and IMing. So I thought it was about time to start experimenting with Wave integration on this site.

I also happen to have stumbled upon 8 14 “invites” for Wave if you are unfortunate enough to not have an account yet. Leave a note in the comments if you would like to receive a nomination for a preview account so you can have look at the Wave in this post as well.

Google Wave

Notice: This wave embed has been removed to avoid strenuous load times.

The Next Step

So the Google Wave embed code is cool, but I have a few more tricks I want to try as I become more familiar with the wave protocol and the project matures. These will most likely become plugins I develop myself over the next several weeks/months as I already have my developer accounts set up and have been toying for a few days now.

The main concept I have come up with is a sync between Google Wave and Wordpress or other blogging systems. Essentially, a wave could be setup on a Wave server and as updates are made to the Wave, the changes would propagate to the blog allowing for collaborative posts. The content of the Wave would be published via an XML export or similar to ensure that those who are not fortunate enough to have Wave accounts could at least read the document.

Further down the road it may be feasible to replace the comment system with a Wave. Although until the protocol matures a little more I don’t think this will work all that well considering the ability to edit one another’s comments and so forth. But controlled authorship within a blog post could become valuable within a Wave system.

And for those of you who are wondering why this post isn’t about Firefly, have a look over here.