The recent signing of Ilya Kovalchuk has brought the controversy of GMs “gaming” the current salary cap rules in the NHL. There are a few other bad examples of course – the other prime example being Henrik Zetterberg.

If you aren’t familiar, the current NHL collective bargaining agreement which put in place a salary cap for the league uses the average of all the years of a contract to calculate a player’s “cap hit”, that is, how much they count against the salary cap for the term of their contract. This means a player like, say, David Legwand can have a 5 year contract that pays him 5.0, 4.5, 4.5, 4.0, and 3.5 million in each year – yet counts as $4.5mil every year of the deal when it comes to the cap. So the Preds have to cut him a $5mil check in the first year, but he only counts $4.5 mil against the cap.

David Legwand

So when Henrik Zetterberg wanted to sign with the Red Wings, who had plenty of money to pay him but had to worry about keeping salary cap space free, he agreed to a 12 year contract worth $73mil. Trick is, each year paid out as 7.0, 7.75, 7.75, 7.75, 7.5, 7.5, 7.5, 7.5, 7.0, 3.35, 1.0, and 1.0. So of course that’s really a 9-year deal worth an average of $7.5mil per year after which Zetterberg will most likely retire – but the extra 3 years on the end make the cap hit count as $6mil, saving the Wings $1.5mil a year in cap space to go sign some nice 3rd line grinder.

Some are offering that the solution to this problem is to limit contract terms to 5 years. That, combined with the  “100% rule” (which states that there cannot be a reduction of the total compensation from any given year over a three-year period by more than 100 per cent), would certainly make it more difficult to game the system (see Martin Erat’s initially rejected contract in 2008 which violated this rule).

However, I have no problem with signing up a player for life. If a team like the Caps want to sign Ovy to a ‘lifetime’ contract they should be able to. If a team like the Islanders wants to throw away their future on Rick Depietro’s gimpy legs, go right ahead.

The real solution to this problem would be to put a rule in place requiring that the minimum salary for any one year of the contract cannot be less than 50% of the value of the highest payout year. Maybe even make it 75% if you really want to get tough. Example: If Hank’s contract peaks at $7.75mil in any one year, the minimum any other year could be would be $5.8mil. Sounds fair, right? Still gives teams room to shift money around in a contract, but not too much.

But that’s not why I’m writing this post. The title of the post is how the Preds could win the Stanley Cup in 2011. So – how does all this salary cap mess, an issue that mostly affects teams with more money to spend than the cap allows – help the Preds. Everyone knows the Preds are one of several teams with a “soft cap” put in place by ownership who cannot afford to write checks for more than a certain amount – no matter what the league cap is. In fact, if the Preds want to continue to receive full revenue sharing from the league they must not spend over the salary cap midpoint according to CBA rules. But that’s just it – they don’t have to.

All David Poile needs to do is reverse what Henrik Zetterberg has done. Find some valuable, talented free agent forwards and defensemen that the Preds could never normally afford to all sign at once – and go for it. Sign them all to rich (but not ridiculous deals). Trick is to front load them with pennies. Tell the players up front: you won’t get much this year in base salary, but we’re going to put together an all-star team, you’ll make a bundle in performance bonuses when we go deep in the playoffs, get your name on the cup, then we’ll trade you away. Next year’s UFA class includes Brad Richards, Joe Thornton, Zedeno Chara, Ed Jovanovski, Alex Semin, and yes even Tomas Vokoun. Sign each of them to deals with a $1mil base pay in year 1 of the deal so the Preds ownership can actually afford it. Then all the following years are signed at true market value. The cap hit doesn’t matter to the Preds ’cause they have cap space to spare. The contracts will still be movable with players of this caliber. The players have a blast, make history, then move on. Heck, they could even have clauses where they get to choose which team to go to, so it’s almost like they’re UFA’s again the next year.

Will this ever happen: no. Of course not. But under the collective bargaining agreement it could. It could even happen under a CBA that limited players to just a 5 year contract. In fact, it would be much more plausible under that sort of term than a 10 year monstrosity that other teams would be hesitant to pick up.

Point is, the CBA needs a clause to limit the difference between minimum and maximum years of the entire deal – not just regulating the length or rapid decreases from year to year.

The interesting thing to me about information portals like this is that many people (myself included) assume that the business model should be one of two things: either pay for content or ad driven. Not both. I’d be fine with paying for something that is worth it if it means never having to see an ad on the site again (see: Pandora), and likewise don’t mind visiting a site with ads if it means I get good content for free. The interesting thing of course is that traditional dead-tree editions of the paper had both: pay for the paper, still has ads.

(continued after the break)Having said that, I do think the newspaper industry has drug its collective feet in lurching into the 21st century and there is still plenty of room for innovation when it comes to a business model. And the New York Times’ “metered model” is not the one to go with.

Here’s the trick though: right now I’ve only seen a subscription-based pay model really work on a practical level. Users are denied access to all but a few articles and everyone else pays a large quarterly/annual fee for access to everything else (see: The Nashville Post). That’s not what the old papers used to be. I used to be able to not worry about picking up a copy of the paper unless it had something that interested me. If it has a quality piece or something really worthy of being read I could grab a copy for a very nominal fee. Right now there’s no site that I’m aware of that lets me pay $0.50 to have access to that day’s content. Or $.10 for a single article.

Why?

2 reason:
1) Some blogger out there is going to either straight plagiarize and repost the article in 30 minutes (or at least summarize it well)
2) Micropayments are still not common enough or well supported online.

In the meantime, with a subscription model, we are left having to shell out serious cash (usually in the $75+ range at least) for an annual subscription to a paper that is 90% filled with content that I could get for free just about anywhere else. Just so I could read a single article that looked intriguing?

Meanwhile we have the New York Times’ “metered” model. First off – this isn’t metered at all. Metered would be as described above with micropayments. Something which I think would work and will work someday. The world just isn’t ready for it. No, the NYT’s “metered” model is supposed to somehow keep track of an individual users access to the site and allow unfettered access to content up to a certain intake level. Once a given user accesses content more than a “certain amount” (nothing has yet specified where this magic wall will be), they will be forced to pay a full subscription fee to have access to more content (presumably for a month?). The trouble with this of course: how are you keeping track of users? If it is by login on the website, then this is an utter joke. All I have to do is log out and continue browsing if I want to access more content. If it is tracked by browser cookies, likewise easily avoided (clear out cookies, switch browsers all together, or use the now ubiquitous “private mode” on your browser of choice). Track by IP address? My DSL connection has a dynamic IP address, as do most people’s. We haven’t even mentioned the various different ways people access content now. I split my browsing almost 33/33/33 between my work laptop/connection, my Android smartphone, and my home PC. The chances of running into this “magic wall” and needing to pay for content sound slim for someone like me.

So they have a pay model for their shareholders to feel warm and cuddly about. “We have a revenue stream identified!”. Too bad it is going to be a fraction of what they probably forecast.

There’s a lot of work left to be done in the pay-for-content world. It will be no easy task.

Here is my wish list of things that I thing Google and others should tackle to make my life easier (in no particular order). Hop to it!

1) Flickr/Facebook integration: I really wish Yahoo would go ahead and buy Facebook so they could integrated it with Flickr. Flickr finally got around to letting you tag people in photos (years after Facebook did), but it is still limited to your Flickr contacts (not even just other Flickr members) and so few of my friends and family are on Flickr that this amounts to very few people being available for tagging. Facebook on the other hand has a massive adoption rate and just about everyone I know is available for tagging. But Facebook’s photo service is just bad. Images are compressed and resized to horrible quality, you can’t tag photos on maps, group them, etc. If I could tag my Facebook friends on my Flickr photos…[sigh]. That’s a world I want to live in.

(continued after the break)
2) Improve Google Calendar on my Android phone: The GMail and Calendar experience is far better on Android than any other mobile platform, but it still has some pretty huge gaps considering the development teams sit down the hall from one another.

A) Invitation Handling – Invites opened in GMail on my Android phones just open a cludgey web interface and don’t link directly to the Calendar app on my phone. Difficult to manage.
B) Show other attendees on events in the Calendar app. If I have an upcoming call for work, it would be nice to be reminded of who will be attending the call.
C) Invitations! Allow me invite others when creating an event on the Calendar app. I can do it from the web, why not the app?

3) Fix Pandora User Login:
Instead of using browser cookies like every other website in the world, Pandora stores user login info in some special way that is apparently stupid. Maybe within the Flash app itself? My wife and I use the same desktop login and same install of Firefox, but use different profiles within Firefox. Each contains our own bookmarks, cache, and set cookies for the dozens of sites we use everyday. Every site on the web works fine – except Pandora. If I log in to Pandora, then close Firefox, then Christy brings up Pandora under her profile, it will be logged in as me. If she logs out, signs into Pandora as herself, then closes the browser and we load my Firefox profile, Pandora will still be on her login. Why?!?

4) Contact Categories in Android: Smallish nitpick here, but for some reason the categories that are created and used for organizing contacts on GMail (over the web) don’t sync to categories on Android phones – just the default 3 categories (Friends, Family, Coworkers). Any custom made contact groups do just fine on web-based GMail, but don’t sync to my phone, so really, what’s the point?

5) Facebook Live Feed Sticking: Why would I want Facebook to select just a few posts that it things I’d like to see from my friends and then display them in a random (non-chronological) order? That’s what the standard Facebook feed does now. Of course they make the “Live” feed still available (everything friends are doing in the order they do them in) but I can’t get Facebook to give that to me by default. Sometimes when I pull up Facebook it remembers my last view settings, but sometimes it doesn’t. It also won’t pass the “live” view to the Facebook app on my phone, just their hacked up version of my feed.

6) More Functions in Google Spreadsheets:
Being able to add cells together does not a spreadsheet make. Beyond lacking more advanced features like macros, pivot tables, and beyond (which I can kinda understand) Google Spreadsheets lacks some fairly common and basic commands. From VLOOKUP to SUMIF and COUNTIF, very usable features are just missing. I understand if Microsoft has some goofy copyright on those exact phrases, but the function isn’t copyrightable or patentable. Refac vs Lotus was one of the first cases I studied in Copyright Law and it is all about spreadsheet formulas and software patents. If you want individuals, businesses and schools to seriously consider using Google Docs as an MS Office replacement, Spreadsheets has a long way to go.

7) Expanded manipulation of picture data in Flickr: I can add tags in bulk, place pictures on a map in bulk, add people to photos in bulk, add and remove photos from sets in bulk, add photos to a group in bulk, etc, etc. You can edit a photo, crop it, flip it, change the saturation, etc. But a few things you can’t do because they would just be too darn useful-

A) Edit “Date Taken” in bulk- Flickr stores two dates for every photo on the service: Date/time taken, and Date/time uploaded. If a pictures has EXIF data with a date/time stamp, it uses that to determine time taken. If there is no EXIF data, it assumes that it was “taken” when it was uploaded. So if you upload of bunch of pictures today from, say, your wedding in June 2002 ago and there’s no EXIF date data because they were scanned in, Flickr will set the “date taken” date to today’s date. If you want to change all the “date taken” data to be the correct date – settle in for a long night. You have to change all of them one by one because Flickr won’t let you change dates or times in bulk. It’s not like Flickr has some objection or technological restriction for being able to change the dates – they let you change them. Just not in bulk. Huge pain! Holy crap!! I just figured out where they added this. I swear it wasn’t a feature just a few months ago the last time I tried. “Change all to same day” is now an option in the Organizer!
B) “Date Uploaded” vs display order- Obviously this is similar to the above objection, but slightly different reason. The “Date Uploaded” date/time is how Flickr determines the order the pictures display in your stream. If you want to change the order of the photos in your stream, you have to edit the upload date. If you upload a bunch of pictures in set A, then upload more in set B, but you want the photos in set B to show up earlier in your time line than those in A, you once again have to manually edit each individual photo’s upload date/time. Just silly. Of course this could be fixed by having a new “display order” property for each photo. That way the upload date could be kept accurate and real and you could still change the order that your photos displayed. Another annoying glitch this would help get rid of: Flickr won’t let you set the “Date Uploaded” date to anything before you create your Flickr account (which I understand would be impossible, but if you’re going to let me change the upload date then reality clearly doesn’t mean that much to you). The upshot of this is that if you uploaded something the day you created your Flickr account (which most people do of course), you can never have anything display before it in the timeline without not only moving the new picture back, but moving the old picture up. Huge pain.

8) Bring back the Facebook social timeline: Small one here too. Facebook used to have this cool tool where you could see your “social life” at a glance on a timeline. When you went to school, started jobs, became friends, got married, etc. I always found it really interesting to see and fascinating to see other people’s timelines. A few years ago they took the feature away with no explanation, even though they left in the ability to identify where and when you became friends with people (though few actually use the feature anymore). Seems like a flip of the switch to add it back. (…and yes, i already joined the Facebook group asking them to add the feature back)

UPDATE — 9) “Mark as read” in Twitter: Like most people, I use Twitter from several different access points. Twidroid on my phone, Twhirl on my work PC, and BeTwittered on my iGoogle home page. I follow quite a few people on two different accounts. I’d love it if Twitter supported the ability for me to mark ‘where I left of’ on my Twitter feed. Right now I have to just scroll through until I start seeing familiar tweets. Twidroid has a feature that will mark my place in my feed, but that doesn’t carry over to other apps so unless I go Twidroid exclusive (not happening) it won’t work. My guess this would have to either be a totally new API feature and/or some kind of OMPL implementation on top of Twitter.

That’s all I can think of for now. I’m sure to think of more later, so watch this space for more brilliant and original life changing ideas for improving the web. After all, I’m sure I was the first to think of all of these improvements.

Oh – and please feel free to contribute more of your own suggestions, or better yet, if you know work-arounds for any of the above issues, please share in the comments!

Second, many of you keep asking me (as someone who’s been using Android for almost a year already with my 1st gen G1) what apps you should install.

So, here is a list of the apps I currently use, in no particular order. I’ll try to update the list occasionally, but no promises. If you want my latest recommendations, hit me up on Twitter. Also, keep in mind I’m using a 1st-gen G1 with Android 1.6. Those of you lucky enough to be using a phone with 2.0 or 2.1 will have a different experience. Some of these apps will not be necessary since the OS has features built-in, while others may not run if the creators haven’t ported it up to 2.x

APPS

• Advanced Task Manager – One of the few pay apps I run and worth every penny. Allows you to manage which apps are allowed to run and which ones aren’t, etc. One of Android’s biggest features is also one of its drawbacks: multitasking. Much like WinMo devices, it can run multiple apps at once but many of those apps don’t “quit” when you leave them. They simply go to the background. This costs you battery life and CPU cycles. Sometimes that’s a good thing, other times not so much. This app lets you kill apps that need killing and even lets you schedule regular termination to squash some pesky apps that auto-start periodically in the background. I got an immediate boost in battery life and performance with this relatively inexpensive app.

(continued after the break)

• AK Notepad – One of dozens of basic notepad apps on Android. Nothing special, this just happens to be the one I picked.
• AndroZip – Basic file manager app that obviously also handles compressed files of various types including .zip archives.
  
• Barcode Scanner – used for one thing: Scanning QR-Code barcodes for hours of fun.
• Bloo – Best Facebook app I’m aware of. For a long time it was better featured than the official Facebook app. While the official app has finally caught up in features (inbox access!), it weighs in a several MB and is slow. Bloo is slim and trim under 1MB install. I found it worth paying for.
• Toggle Widgets – A set of widgets I put on my desktop that let me turn on/off features of the phone. I use the Bluetooth, Wifi, and Brightness Toggle Widgets. They look nice and function perfectly.
• Bookmark Manager Free – For some weird reason the default Android browser bookmark system arranges your bookmarks in the order they were created and cannot be re-ordered. This app lets you rearrange your bookmarks however you’d like.
• Bookmarks 2 – allows you to create shortcuts straight to any of your browser Bookmarks on your homes screen with prettier icons. Even allows you to take/crop screenshots of the webpage as the icon if no favicon, etc is available.
• Kaboodle – Tiny little app that just gives me an “Add to Kaboodle List” option on the “Share” menu for any browser page. Lets me quickly add things to my Kaboodle wish lists from my phone.
• mAnalytics – Great mobile interface for Google Analytics web stats
• wpToGo – WordPress authoring/editing tool. Doesn’t allow you to manage your WP dashboard, but is a remarkably good editor for WP posts.
• Contact Owner – Very simple app that adds your basic contact info to the lock screen. That way if you lose your phone someone knows how to contact you even though they can’t unlock your phone.
• Facebook Sync – Syncs all my Facebook Contacts’ profile pics and sets them as the caller ID pic on my phone. Pretty cool :-)
• Flashlight – Very basic app that just turns the screen all white and the brightness all the way up. Turns the phone into a pretty effective flashlight. Returns all settings when the app exits.
• GPS Tracker – Basic app that lets me record raw GPS data for recording where i am and have been, but more useful than that it also has a mode where you can setup a special SMS code for your phone. Then if you lose your phone, just use another cellphone to send your phone a SMS message with that special code. When your phone gets the message it will turn on GPS, find out where it is, then text the GPS coordinates back to the phone you texted from. Boom, found your phone!
• Google Goggles – If you aren’t familiar with this you should be. Take a picture. It will turn any text found into a search, will translate any foreign language text, and best of all – can identify buildings, posters, etc and display information about them.
• Google Voice – The official app that is a must have for anyone with a Google Voice account and an Android phone.
• gTask – very small “app” that is a glorified shortcut to the mobile site for Google Tasks. Makes it a little faster and easier to load though.
• Layar – Augmented reality app. Very cool. Just try it out. Trust me.
• Listen – Google’s “official” podcast app. Best podcast manager/player out there, but unfortunately it doesn’t let you easily add any link for a podcast. It has to been one in a preset (though admittedly large) directory of podcasts. Also doesn’t support video podcasts. Still my preference compared to other options though
• LukLuk – simple app that lets you watch a selection of movies and TV shows streamed over a 3G connection. I’m sure this is all perfectly legal and licensed…
• OI Safe – password safe. If you have to remember a huge set of passwords that constantly have to change (like i do for work) this is a must-have app
• Pandora – Lets you listen to (and create new) Pandora stations on the fly. This app is a MUST
• PdaNet – this one isn’t on the Android market but can be found on the web. Simple tethering app that lets you use your phone’s 3G data connection on your laptop/PC. Mileage may vary as supported by your carrier.
• Pure Calendar Widget – Lets you put your day’s calendar on your home screen. Very useful for me to stay on top of my day.
• Qik – Live video broadcasting from my phone. I also use the uStream app occasionally, though i like the Qik app a little more.
• Rings Extended – By default Android only lets you use certain built-in sounds for many notification events, etc (though you can set ring tones to just about any MP3 on your phone). This lets you use any sound file anywhere on your phone for any sound event.
• Ruler – gives you an accurate ruler on your screen. Kinda useful/cool.
• Shazam – Lets you hold your phone up to a speaker playing any music anywhere anytime, then identifies what you’re listening to. Great for when you hear some song on the radio and want to know who it is, etc. Also lets you then buy that song on AmazonMP3, search for the artists on MySpace/YouTube, etc. Very cool
• Shop Savvy – Lets you scan the barcode of any product anywhere, then searches the web for the best prices online and in stores, gives you reviews of the product, and lets you save products to a list. Amazingly useful. Amazon also has an official app (that is a huge bloated piece of software) that lets you just take a picture of the item and supposedly identify it but it doesn’t work so well. This app uses barcodes and pulls from more sites than just Amazon
• Skype – Simple app that lets you see who is online and text chat with them through Skype. Unfortunately doesn’t allow for voice or video chat right now.
• Snap Photo Pro – first app worth paying for. The built-in camera app on Android kinda sucks. This one gives you TONS of options (including the ability to edit/crop/adjust levels) and lets you take much higher quality pictures. Worth every penny to buy the full version
• Spare Parts – Kinda like “power toys” for old versions of Windows. Just opens up settings and tweaks for the Android system that are normally hidden.
• Stopwatch – Basic stopwatch app.
• Seesmic – Free Twitter client. Allows for multiple accounts to be managed. Fast. Easy to use. Can handle lists and other advanced Twitter features. I think we have a winner… for now.
  
• TripIt – Very cool app that imports travel itineraries and stores all useful info in easy to use formats for offline access (flight numbers, check in info, etc)
• Voice Recorder – simple voice recorder app
• Voicemail – T-Mobile visual voicemail app.
• Yammer – App used to access my internal/corporate Yammer feeds.

GAMES

• Battle for Mars – Awesome realtime strategy game. Worth paying for if you like RTSs at all.
• Phit Droid – Fun, simple puzzle game.
• Chess – Um. It’s a chess game.
• Mahjongg
• Friction Mobile – really addictive, very fun little arcade-style game.
• Droid Mini-Golf
• Labyrinth Lite – marble maze game
• Shot – another fun, simple puzzle game
• Nesoid – Nintendo Entertainment Center emulator. Pay app but worth every penny.
• Snake – old time snake game
• Solitare
• Trap – fun little arcade game

Old Apps I don’t use anymore:

• ASTRO – File Manager. Worth noting that the pay version of this app also has some task management features like “Adv Task Manager”, but I prefer that apps features to the one’s built into ASTRO. ASTRO does allow you to backup any free apps to your SD card (though sadly not run them from the SD card unless you have rooted your phone) and copy/paste/move/rename files like any good file manager program should. Good app, but got to be a little too bloated with scope creep.
• Base Toucher Lite – Cool app that reminds me to call and talk with friends. Sounds lame, but I’m just that antisocial sometimes. This lets me set 5 friends with “touch” frequencies. Reminds me to touch base with them every X number of days so I can maintain those friendships.
• SportyPal – An running/jogging/biking, etc tool. Just started using it myself. Looks cool and supposedly helps me keep track of how much I’ve been working out, etc. A little bloated, but very nice.
• G-Mon – a war driving app that simply scans the area for any WiFi access points (open or not) and then tags them on a map with GPS. Set it to running, drive around your neighborhood, then go home and load the map in Google Earth. Very cool results :-)
• GPS 1 Click Direction – Turn-by-Turn GPS with outloud (voice) directions. Obsolete now that Google has built-in Navigation for Google Maps. 1 Click was a great app to fill the gap though. Just not needed anymore.
• T-Mobile Hotspot Connect – only useful for those of you on T-Mobile of course, but lets me find and get on any T-Mobile HotSpot around the US
• Home++ – Best Home replacement app out there. Allows for more home screens, features a great quick-access bar and a few other features. Best part is that it is faster than most other home replacements, smaller install, and FREE. Did I mention it was FREE. Only downside vs. other home replacements is that it doesn’t allow skins, but I’ll take free and more features over skins any day. Note that I said “faster than other home replacements”. Relative statement. It is still going to slow down the performance of your phone. That’s why I don’t use it anymore.
• FTP Server – yes, an actual FTP server for serving files off my phone on the web. Don’t use it often, but has served me well when needing a way to get files off my phone wirelessly. Awesome if you need it, but I never used it, so I uninstalled after a while.
• Metal Detector – Turns your phone into a metal detector. Not a very useful one, but cool for showing off your phone
• NewsRob – Google Reader client. I just use the web-based Google Reader mobile site. It has improved a lot recently so this is one more app I could clean off my system. Good for what it does if you need off-line Reader capabilities though.
• SportsTap – shows me scores, summaries, and box scores for just about any sports/team I want.
• StreamFurious – lets me listen to any ShoutCast server on the web. Cool, but with Pandora out now it is really unnecessary.

• Talk To Me – Think universal translators from Star Trek. Talk into your phone, select the language you want, it says (out loud) what you just said in the language you selected.
• twt – the smallest/lightest/most basic Twitter client i could find. I use it for quickly checking my work Twitter account occasionally.
• Twidroid – Speed has improved since early versions and the feature set just beats all other Twitter apps. Keeps all caches on the SD card rather than in system memory like TwitterRide and allows for multiple Twitter accounts to be managed from one app. Also supports the new ReTweet function and Lists better than any other Twitter app. Costs more than it should, but some find it worth it. Bloated compared to Seesmic in my opinion.
• Weather – basic, small weather widget for my desktop. The Weather Channel app is cool, but huge and bloated. This does everything i need in a weather app in under 500k
• Xtremelabs Speedtest – lets me test the speed of the network I’m on at the time (EDGE, 3G, wifi, etc

New Indiana Jones Collectible Item

(I’m going to assume everyone reading this has either seen Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or does care about a spoiler for a non-plot related action point early in the movie. You are hereby warned.)

They, like so many before them make fun of the scene where Indiana Jones climbs into a lead-lined refrigerator to survive a nuclear blast at relatively close range. They essentially use to the term “nuked the fridge” interchangeably with “jumped the shark“. They incredulously reject the scene as silly, unbelievable, and out of place in an Indiana Jones movie.

(continued after the break)

Here’s the thing: I still find it funny that people get so bent out of shape about the fridge scene (or the monkey/vine scene) in Crystal Skull because it didn’t fit in the trilogy…or whatever we have to call it now that there are four movies.

Do none of these people remember Indy using a rubber dingy to survive a drop from an airplane into the mountains (and subsequent safe journey through a series of convenient caves and valleys) in Temple of Doom?. Or surviving a fight with a big Nazi brute near a taxiing airplane while surrounded by HUNDREDS of other Nazis ready to shoot him the moment he turned to run if he won the fight? Or surviving ridiculous jumps and turns in racing mine cars – to me the most ludicrous scene in any of the four Indiana Jones movies by far. Seriously, forget the issues with physics, etc: why would anyone ever build mine cart tracks with those kinds of dips, climbs, and turns? Silly.

To me this scene really fits more in the same category as using a several hundred pound stone crypt as a floating shield from a surface fire in The Last Crusade (yeah, no way that would sink before they ever got underneath it). Not only does it show him as tough as nails and athletic, but smart. And not just knowledgeable about ancient civilizations, but brainy smart and street smart.

Seriously, go watch all of those scenes (I linked to a few of the clips above). Tell me which scene stands out as the most difficult to buy to you. I’d bet it isn’t the nuked fridge.

It’s not like the Indiana Jones series is meant to be realistic. It was based on ridiculous, over the top serials from the 1930’s. Crystal Skull absolutely fit right in to that mold. Of course it is stupid that Indiana Jones could survive the nuclear blast (much less the fight that preceding it at his age). But he’s freaking Indiana Jones. That’s the POINT!

Did Crystal Skull break Spielberg’s promise of as little CGI as possible. Absolutely. Were the CGI groundhogs, etc annoying. Sure. But the movie fits. I’d easily rank it above Temple of Doom over all (though still behind Last Crusade and Raiders), and it has solid rewatchability. Do i have concerns about them trying to make a 5th movie? Oh yeah. Lucas/Spielberg barely got away with not ruining a classic trilogy the way Lucas had already done with the Star Wars prequels. I don’t know that we’ll get that lucky again.

But Crystal Skull is fun, and it belongs just as it is.

I just got through seeing the Toy Story 1 and 2 in 3D double feature. Those that know me, already know that i’m a huge Pixar fan, so i won’t go into a long review of the movies. They are amazing, life changing events and you should see them (though amazingly, i think i was in the theater tonight with several people that had never seen either movie). This is more a review of the 3D-i-zation of the movies.

Interestingly i was both very pleased and disappointed. In that chronological order. I also made a discovery that i had often wondered about but never gotten the chance to test. It explains why i have always gotten a bit of a headache when i’ve watched just about any 3D movie.

First a little background: “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2″ were, of course, not originally created for 3D presentation. They were originally created using 3D computer animation (“Toy Story” of course being famous as the first feature length all CG film), but rendered to flat 2D images for traditional exhibition. The great thing about this process is that, of course, Pixar still has the original files they used to create these movies so it was a relatively easy process to re-render the movies in 3D (after making lots of minor tweaks to lighting, etc). This means old movies in 3D, but in true 3D – not kinda hacked apart and “spatialized” like we’ve been hearing George Lucas threaten to do with Star Wars.

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That i could tell, no other major changes were made to the first movie. Obviously the detail in the picture was more apparent in a beautiful digital movie theater than on the old SD DVD release i have at home, but i didn’t notice any major re-working of backgrounds or textures, etc. If it was there it was very subtle. There was still a detail jump from Toy Story to Toy Story 2, as well there should be.

The practical upshot of them making no serious modifications to either movie was that a very ‘old’ and basic computer animated movie was thrust into the present and re-rendered in 3D. This meant that some of the more basic techniques used in that movie were preserved and stood in stark contrast to some of the more “advanced” techniques that were present in Toy Story 2. The most obvious of these differences, thanks to the 3D presentation, was artificial focal depth.

(We’ll take another detour for explanation…) When you take a picture using a standard camera (still or video), the lens system focuses at a certain depth. Objects that are much closer or much father away from the object being focused on will be blurry and out of focus. On the other hand, a computer generated image, like any artificial image, doesn’t naturally have any actual focal depth. Objects in the foreground, objects in the middle of the scene, and objects in the background are all perfectly in focus. So, when rendering the film, movie makers will create artificial focal depth and intentionally blur objects in the background and foreground to simulate the focal depth that happens naturally on a photographed (or filmed) scene in the real world. This is all well and good when the movie is being rendered down to a 2D presentation. We are used to seeing the blur of focal depth in 2D images on screen and it helps the scene feel more “real” – like it was photographed – and have much more depth perception than if everything was in perfect focus. A clear example of this artificial focal depth and how it is used to trick your eye into perceiving depth and scale can be seen on my Flickr stream using a process known as a fake tilt-shift.

So… originally Toy Story didn’t have much if any focal depth added. As you can see in the shot below, the details of the writing on the cardboard boxes in the far distant background are just as in focus as Woody’s face (see another example shot here).

"Toy Story" shot showing no artificial focal depth

Toy Story 2 on the other hand used the snot out of this technique of artificial focal depth, as it was all the rage and becoming common at the time of that movies production. It made for a more immersive and “real” feeling movie at the time. You can see an example below of the extreme focal depth blur added to this shot from Toy Story 2. It is most pronounced on the writing of the Buzz Lightyear box in the far right of the screen. (see another example here)

"Toy Story 2" shot showing artificial focal depth

The trouble is: when you combine focal depth with 3D presentation, this equals headaches. Literally (for me anyway).

You see, the human eye is used to everything it looks at being in 3D, and everything it looks directly at being in focus. Simple enough. When you’re looking at a photograph or a traditional 2D movie, both of your eyes are seeing exactly the same perspective of that image and, though you can recognize depth in the shot, your eye/mind isn’t really trying to interpret depth since both eyes are seeing the same thing. However, in 3D your eyes are seeing different images. That’s how 3D works. Whether in the real world or watching a 3D movie, you perceive 3D because your eyes are seeing slightly different pictures. (Here is yet another example from my Flickr stream of basic 3D photography). 3D movies basically basically trick your mind into thinking you’re seeing a real scene, not a photographed image.

Thanks to the 3D perspective being provided by those fancy glasses, your mind expects to be able to look around “the room” in the shot and focus on whatever it wants. In “Toy Story” my eyes could do that just fine. No focal depth blur was added, so you could look around the room and your eyes could focus on the wall at the “back” of this scene and be fine with it. You percieve the depth in the shot because of the different images going to each eye, just like in the real work, but you’re able to focus all around the room, just like in the real world.

The trouble starts if you look off into the background and attempt to focus your eyes on objects in the distance, but artificial focal blur has been added, like the house in the distance of this shot. Your eyes assume they can look around this room where they are perceiving depth through different images like in the real world. But they can’t focus on the background. Try as they might to focus back there, the movie makers have made sure it will never work. As a result i had a headache through most of “Toy Story 2″, which never appeared in “Toy Story” and quickly left as soon as i walked out of the theater.

So there you have it. I have headaches because my eyes are trying to focus where they can’t and my brain can’t deal with getting “double” information on depth (different images to each eye on top of focal blur).

Sadly this means i will probably get headaches as i watch just about any 3D movie from here on out, unless the movie makers suddenly realize this issue and decide to make/render 3D movies differently in the future. I’m also not sure how movie makers are supposed to fix this issues for live-action 3D photography other than to use very short lenses with very broad focal depth so that most everything in the shot is in focus on the film.

But a few times lately I’ve been getting the urge to write more and more. I also began to recognize how cathartic it was for me to express myself – even if it was about hockey, much less something else. And so much the better when anyone actually reads it (especially considering my writing is nowhere near what Christy’s is) though that’s almost beside the point.

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Getting some distance from my blog also helped me realize what an absolute mess it had become. So many widgets and cute little things added to sidebars. Trackers and flickr badges… oh the clutter. I was very proud of my hacked 3 column layout, but it just went against everything I ever tell my clients about design. It was embarrassing. So I resolved to give the blog a face-lift before bothering to write much more. Trick was I didn’t have the time or patience to code my own layout and I couldn’t find any templates that looked good enough. I wanted something “different” whatever that meant. But couldn’t even find a template worth modding.

Then I found this one.

With the ‘magazine style’ layout and simple design it was exactly the breath of fresh air I was looking for. The front page columns juxtaposed with the full page post view also provide a good reminder to let the content be flexible and not format it for any one presentation – very important since such a large percentage of people view content through RSS on a myriad of devices and feed readers these days. Of course moving to WordPress also provided me a plethora of plug-ins and other options – like static pages (see my About and Blogroll pages as examples). Simple little things I never had on Blogger because it didn’t support them. All of these combined for a much more user-friendly (and SEO friendly) blog.

So here it is. Hopefully this, combined with a WordPress app for my Android phone and a renewed desire to get back into photo taking, will get me blogging more. We’ll see. I’ve said this before ya know.

I am so proud of what she did with the store, both in the good it did for so many people, and the awareness it raised about fair trade – but also of how she was able to run the business. Outside of some starting capital, the business very quickly supported itself, which is something most businesses can’t say in good times, much less in this economy.

The good news for all of you is that she has a FABULOUS sale clearing out her remaining inventory. Great time to do a little early christmas shopping if you ask me :-)

Check the clearance sale here – www.shopghia.com

So, since i had it written out anyway, i decided to post it here, if for no other reason that 1) to honor him and 2) i haven’t posted anything in a really, really long time.

me, my father, and grandfather a several years ago

For a long time growing up, to me Papaw was just Papaw. One of those constants that was always there and never changed. As I grew older and became a teenager, I saw him as kind and gentle. A man of reason and intelligence. Always quiet and understated – but also through the eyes of a teenager I’ll admit: he seemed a little boring. He was an architect and engineer, and that was ok I suppose, but I didn’t exactly see him as exciting – and he ate at Luby’s a little more often than a 13 year old thought was normal.

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But I am very happy to say that as I grew up further, I started to see more of my Papaw then I had before. And soon I realized that seeing him as more than just a quiet and kind grandfather also taught me a strong life lesson.

It’s worth backing up a little more and saying that I grew up hearing stories of far off war heroes and great men in my family, but I had never met any. They had all passed away before I was born. They all existed in stories and pictures, but I’ll admit that sometimes it was hard to identify with them.

I also remember hearing that Papaw was in a war – in fact I remember being confused as a little kid if it was WWI or WWII. I knew he was in the corps of engineers. I remember being told that they “built bridges and things like that”. When I looked at my grandfather and thought of an engineer, I thought nothing more of it. I was proud of his service. I thought he built bridges for the army.

Then a few years ago, just as the parkinsons was starting to take him from us, he started talking. Sharing in a way he apparently never had, or at least hadn’t in years. I don’t remember if I asked a question or if he brought it up. But he started telling me stories I’d certainly never heard – and later found out, I don’t think had ever been told.

And I emphasize that not out of pride for him confiding in me. It was pure luck that I was there when he decided to share what he did with me. I emphasize it because it is the clearest demonstration of his humility.

You see, he was a hero. Like so many of his generation he didn’t think so. He was just part of the war machine. He was drafted in and was doing what he had to do. But I can tell you now he was a great man and a hero.

He was a part of what was nicknamed the Red Ball Express. They were the crack team of engineers and truckers that did the impossible: built fuel lines and kept them safe from Nazi saboteurs to keep up with Patton’s march through Europe.

If that still may not sound like much, you’re in need of a quick history lesson:

Just after the allies’ landing at Normandy on D-Day, the allies broke through and had the Nazis on their heels. Allied leadership decided to abandon plans of a slow advance and pushed their advantage on the Germans – not allowing the enemy to setup another strong line of defense. The goal was to keep them in constant retreat.

This is something the Germans were unprepared for because it was, of course, impossible.

The trucks and tanks of war, not to mention the supply trucks needed to bring soldiers and ammo to a constantly moving front line, were not exactly hybrids. They burned up fuel at an alarming rate. So much so that the quickly advancing army outran the existing supply chain. Prior to that it could take days to extend pipeline miles over the rolling hills and fields of Europe.

My grandfather and his fellows were called in to rapidly extend pipeline from Cherbourg to a constantly advancing set of supply stations, which then moved the fuel to trucks that carried supplies to the front lines.

They were asked to do the impossible: keep up with George Patton. They did. Without them, the allied march through Europe would have taken months longer and cost many more lives if the Nazi’s had had more time to shore up more defenses at the Rhine. Instead, my Papaw and others like him kept the axis on their heels and turned the tied of the war.

After Papaw first told me about this, I did some research and found a quote from Gen. Patton about the work of the engineers: “my men can eat their belts if they have to, but they have to have fuel in their trucks and tanks”.

When I read that quote to Papaw he said “yeah, that sounds about like Patton.”

Unfortunately when Papaw first started telling me these stories, I didn’t realize what was happening. It was an extension of a conversation we’d been having for a while and suddenly I realized that he’d been telling me his war stories for over an hour.

Now that I think of it, I think it started by him telling the story of how he and Mamaw met just after he’d been drafted while he was in training. They had agreed to keep writing during the war, and then met back up afterwards.

But then he started telling other stories. About his daily patrol up and down the latest length of pipe w/ his rifle, checking for signs of sabotage to the line. On one of those trips, he came across a cow that had stepped on a German landmine not 6 feet from where he had just walked past on his previous patrol.

He told a story of how, while awaiting transfer to a new station in Europe, an officer dropped his own rifle and it went off, shot through the ceiling and killed a soldier upstairs. Papaw said “He had to live with that”, and I could tell by the way he said it that papaw had lived with it too.

He told another story about how a group of soldiers found an abandoned German storage tank, still partially full with fuel and no one knew how much fuel was in it – or why the Germans had left it intact. They called my grandfather in. To help them figure out how much fuel was in the tank. As he said: he did the basic calculus and figured out how how much fuel was in the tank. Nothing really”. But I have a feeling that was not a common knowledge set for 19 year old soldiers in the 1940’s. So much so that if I remember right, he got a commendation for that action.

Yes, my grandfather got a military commendation in wartime for his use of calculus. To me, that’s pretty cool.

After realizing I had been talking to Papaw about these things for more than an hour, we had to leave. I called my dad and told him what I’d just heard, and he was surprised. He’d never heard any of these stories. So the next day I went back, with maps and a tape recorder in hand, and talked with Papaw some more.

The only time I remember him saying he was scared, was during the outdoor camp out portion of basic training. He said the mosquitoes were as big as your hand. He didn’t sleep the whole night and he just kept telling himself it was only for that one night.

He talked about the “tin can” liberty ships. Built to cram as many soldiers on board as possible, as quickly and cheaply as possible. He said the bad part was that they returned during winter time in the north Atlantic, with horrible storms. 20-40ft waves that would rise up, then as he put it “just drop out from under the ship and we’d go crashing down” He said they thought they would fall apart but nobody asked questions when getting on board. They just wanted to go home.

And there were other stories too. Too many to tell here. I’m planning on putting up a website with as many as I can recall and caught on tape, very soon.

So…
I’ll admit that while growing up, Papaw was never on my list of who I wanted to grow up to be like. He was just a quiet, understated architect. But now I understand a bit more of who he was. Not just an architect, but a boy who became a man on the battlefields of Europe, and who played and instrumental role in freeing Europe.

And the most amazing part of all – he didn’t care if anyone knew. For me, a rather proud and often loud young man – someone who easily judges others by their appearance and is all too quick too call out my own accomplishments – this was a huge lesson.

I’d personally known a war hero for years, but never known it. Because to him, it wasn’t important.

And here is the lesson I learned.

He was just doing his job then, just as he went to work and quietly did his job for the rest of his life – and changed the landscape of central Texas and beyond with his countless designs and consultations. He wasn’t “just” an architect and an engineer. He was a good man, who lived his life and did good work. He took pride in his work, but a quiet pride. He didn’t care if people knew. He simply did good work and let it speak for itself. All of it just as important to him as helping to free Europe. I am almost ashamed that it took seeing him in a more dramatic light to see that it was his whole life that was great. But I see that now.

And I know now that if I turn out to be anything like my grandfather, I am both very lucky, and a great man indeed.

Anyone that knows BNA and knows me, knows this means frustration. You see, i’m a geek and like my power-hungry gadgets, and BNA is practically void of convenient power outlets. While most airports in the country have rows of waiting area seats complete with A/C and USB power outlets, BNA has only a few power outlets scattered under payphones, behind doors, and at the base of columns, like the picture to the right. With few exceptions, all of these require sitting on the floor to access.

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So imagine my surprise when my dad (who also travels a good bit) sent me this. He decided to ask about what i think we all assumed were impending upgrades to the waiting areas. Apparently, we’ll be waiting a while:

I was talking to a gate agent at Southwest Airlines today, and he tells me that Southwest has requested that they be allowed to add outlets and USB charging devices in their gate areas and were denied. They have even installed some of the chairs, but were not allowed to connect the power to them. I have experienced these at other airports and wondered why they had not installed them in Nashville. To find it is our own airport that is keeping these from being installed is frustrating and embarrassing.

If you are like me and want the airport to allow these needed improvements, take a moment and write a short message to the Nashville Airport Authority here:
http://www.flynashville.com/comments

So there you have it. Your call to action. Let’s all let BNA know how ridiculous this is, and bring Nashville’s airport into the 21st 20th century.

We were very excited when Southwest approached the Airport Authority with the charging station project however the installation required would have involved significant core drilling of the floor plates to accomplish implementation. The nature of our infrastructure doesnt allow for surface electrical runs which would have continued to be a factor down the line if the charging stations ever needed to be relocated. Realizing this is an important and necessary customers service enhancement, we have taken on the project ourselves through our wireless services provider and hope to be rolling this out throughout the terminal (not just Southwest gates) in the very near future. Thanks for you interest in our facility and our program. We welcome your comments.

Rebecca Ramsey
Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority
One Terminal Drive, Suite 501
Nashville, Tennessee 37214-4114
615.275.1600

Here’s the quick list of features i’m looking forward to most:

• Support for A2DP & AVRCP Bluetooth profiles (Stereo!)
• Video recording (with better YouTube account integration)
• Soft (onscreen) keyboard
• Open Applications by Voice Command
• “Significant” bug fixes in email checking, especially POP3 and IMAP
• New menu option to list running processes
• Updated WebKit browser core (way faster!)
• Copy / paste is enabled in the browser
• Find is enabled in the browser (for searching within a page)
• Save attachments from MMS

I’m not sure, but it may also finally include support for more Home Screen widgets.

Another cool addition to the Cupcake build of Android that doesn’t affect my G1: It now supports x86, which if i read it right, means i can load Android on my PC if i want to.

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UPDATE: Maybe it’s coming, maybe it isn’t. T-Mobile USA won’t confirm or deny it yet, but said an announcement is forthcoming.

UPDATE 2: Confirmed. Rollout starts the weekend of May 9th and will be complete by the end of May.

I'm not going to bother telling you who I ended up voting for last fall. I really was one of those magical "undecided voters" right up until election day. My reasons were my own. I was going to be equally satisfied and frustrated with either candidate, though for different reasons of course. There's no point in talking about what I liked or didn't like about each one, because the point in this discussion is my specific disappointment in Obama.

Now, I had no expecations that Obama (or McCain or any other candidate really) would actually do things in office that I wanted. By the same token, I don't pretend that the actions anyone else would be taking to solve the economic crisis or Iraq or anything would be *that* dramatically different than what our current president is doing or any former president did. Politicians for either side aren't that different anymore. They use the same rediculous, reactionary arguments against each other over and over, just changing the mascot they have on their buttons. Most real policy is made in congress and in government agencies with only tenuous ties to the executive branch.

No, I'm not disappointed in the governing of the new president, because my expectations were so low to begin with for both parties. My disappointment with Obama is in the one thing I thought was his upside: his rhetoric and persona.

Obama was an amazing speaker (relative to modern politicians anyway) during the campaign. He was able to speak eloquently and in vague generalities that inspired many, yet offended few. That's how he got elected, and in a country that needs a serious morale boost, it was a welcome site. His tone was positive and he had a perfect balance of regal posture and populist cheerleading. I thought if he could do anything, he could at least restore some confidence and pride to the population, and improve the image of our government both at home and abroad.

But he hasn't. In fact, I'd say he's hard pressed to be called a major improvement over GW Bush (who, regardless of your political views, was widely acknowledged as a poor PR rep for the US. Just wasn't his forte).

In a matter of months in office, Obama (and Michelle) have angered the British people with laughably poor observance of decorum and proper gift giving. Barak has proven himself to be a relatively awkward speaker when off his teleprompters (which he takes everywhere, no matter how cumbersome) and a downright average speaker when unguided by his speech writers. He has failed to take a buck-stops-here approach that one would expect from his populist persona in cases like the horrible blunder his staff made in scheduling an unannounced (and thus panic inducing) commercial and military aircraft flyover of Manhattan for a photo opp.

None of these are horrible in themselves. Even added up, they aren't *that* bad, especially compared to others in history. But to me, Obama was elected to do one thing that was (and is) deserately needed: give upe and inspire. He has totally failed to do either. Even most passionate Obama supporters I know are giving him mixed reviews at best – on both policy and rhetoric.

Mr Obama, we expected more.

For those following the saga of the ReTweetBot (vote here for a new name, we don’t like that one), you’ll know that it is a cool Twitter app that i had an idea for, and i talked Garrett into coding for me.

Well, i’d like to pay Garrett back for his trouble (and ok, i might keep a little for myself).

So… ChipIn here. Heck, even if it’s just $0.50, that’s fine.

Thanks!

This year’s slate is a bit lighter than the past few years, due mostly to me being crazy busy and just knowing that i’ll get around to seeing fewer movies (especially since babysitting is now an issue). Here’s what we have so far:

Planning/Hoping to See:
May 1 – Battle For Terra
Looks very cool, little buzz about it though

May 1 – X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Looks awesome!

May 8 – Star Trek
I’m still nervous of what they’ll do to my Trek…

May 22 – Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
First flick was great fun

May 29 – Up
Pixar movie. Will be awesome. Period.

July 15 – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Looks great, and loved this book

August 28 – The Boat The Rocked
Very cool subject matter and great cast. Music history!

October 16 – Where The Wild Things Are
Kinda on the fence, but i want to be excited about this one

Interested In Seeing: (Probably waiting for video)
April 24 – The Soloist
Obvious Oscar bait, but looks good

May 21 – Terminator Salvation
I hated the first 3 so much, but no James Cameron gives me hope

June 24 – Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen
I will see this movie eventually. Can’t avoid it. Michael Bay stinks though.

July 1 – Public Enemies
Great cast, great subject matter

July 1 – Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Liked the first movies

September 3 – Moon
Sam Rockwell + trippy sci-fi = cool

August 7 – GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Gonna be cheesy fun

August 14 – The Time Traveler’s Wife
Romance + sci fi = cool?

October 9 – The Informant
Cast, director, curious…

October 23 – Astro Boy
Good buzz around it

December 11 – The Lovely Bones
Peter Jackson + great cast

I have increasingly been using Twitter to share my thoughts with the world. The tool of instant spur of the moment microblogging has sucked me in completely. So much so that i actually created (or helped create) a tool specifically so i could have a place on Twitter to talk about the Predators and not annoy the general population.

However, a strange thing has happened lately. I have begun having more frequent thoughts which i would like to share with the world, but can not be expressed in 140 characters or less. Personally, i blame the long hours minutes of holding my son Ian while waiting for him to fall asleep. With that much unoccupied time, my mind wonders on long tangents it hasn’t been able to in a while.

Anyway. I also remembered that i can quickly blog from my phone from anywhere via email in a manner not dissimilar to how i use Twitter. This allows me the freedom to quickly express that brilliant thought that will change the lives of everyone who reads it, but do so in an unencumbered fashion (and with pictures!). For instance, i can now afford the characters to use words like “unencumbered”.

So, be prepared to have this space active once again. Or at least a little more so. But to be clear, a lot of what i have to say, especially about the Preds, will probably still be on Twitter.