Imperfect Storm
Posted on | November 22, 2008 at 12:28 pm | 3 Comments
It’s the war of the touchscreen phones! Is it a coincidence that yesterday marked the release of both the Blackberry Storm (i.e. “the iPhone killer”) and the 2.2 iPhone firmware update? I say “No!”, it is not a coincidence!
I haven’t seen the Storm yet. One of my co-workers went to a local Verizon store yesterday but they were out of them and promised to FedEx one to his house today. I did download the iPhone update this morning and played around with it a bit. The biggest change is the addition of Google Street View to the Google Maps application, which is just all kinds of weird and cool. I thought this would be a way nice thing to have when searching for a restaurant or store I’ve never been to. I could check out the Street View and see exactly where it is located and maybe even where to park in the area. So I tested it on a restaurant that I know is near work but which I’ve never actually seen. I got their menu in the mail, but I just couldn’t picture from the address where it was, even though I’ve been looking around that area lately when driving by. It’s Karma Asian at 22 South Broadway. Google Maps found it okay, but when I went to Street View, here’s what I got:
This explains why I was never actually able to see the restaurant. Obviously some sort of vortex has swallowed it whole. I’m really not sure I want to eat there now, although it could be exciting. (Here’s the Google Maps Street View link, check it out for yourself.)
Aside from that, Street View seems to be working okay. I find it really strange, and somewhat frightening, that I can call up a picture of my house on my iPhone, and it’s a picture that I didn’t take/store.
Latre.
Jogged Today: Yes (@ 40°F)
Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Jogging:
- “Lord Stop The Bar” (Our Lady of the Highway)
- “Favours For Favours” (The Futureheads)
- “Hungry Like the Wolf” (Duran Duran)
- “Oregon Lanes” (Trolleyvox)
- “I Stood Still” (The Hyphens)
- “Such Little Nonbelievers” (Loud Family)
- “Invisible Politicians” (Trotsky Icepick)
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “jennifer garner comic strip”.
Videogame(s) Played Yesterday: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)
Chasing The Pregnant Dragons
Posted on | November 21, 2008 at 8:12 am | 5 Comments
Anything ever invented eventually shows up at the iPhone App Store. Case in point: The old Atari 2600 game Adventure (iTunes Store link here). Adventure was the first of its kind in many ways. It arguably started the whole action-adventure videogame genre, which is my favorite videogame genre. It also contained the first appearance of a gaming Easter egg. I remember when this game originally came out for Atari’s console and my little sister and I spent long hours playing it. Back in those days, there were no save files or anything, so you had to play it all at one sitting, or just leave the console on. The iPhone emulation is a pixel-perfect recreation, even down to the screen flickering. It has the three different difficultly levels, the dragons that look like they’re pregnant, and the object-stealing bat.
The Atari 2600 console only had a joystick for a controller, with a single button off to the side. That kind of game is easy to recreate on the iPhone. Instead of a joystick, you have the accelerometer/tilt sensor in the iPhone, which you use to move your pixel around. Instead of pushing the button to drop an object, you tap the screen anywhere. It’s that simple! Moving around takes a little getting used to, but that wasn’t the most straightforward, tightly controlled thing on the old Atari anyway. I like how you can get out of the application at any time, and when you get back in, it starts up exactly where you left off. No leaving the console on!
I downloaded it and I’ve been playing around with it some, including defeating the game on “Easy”, which takes just a few minutes. Wow, nostalgia time. Tonight I think I’ll make some non-microwave popcorn and watch reruns of Dallas.
Latre.
P.S. But of course what I really want is this.
Jogged Today: Yes (@ 27°F)
Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Jogging:
- “Beauty On The Beach” (Hugh Cornwell)
- “Bombers Bay” (Echo & the Bunnymen)
- “No Surprises” (Radiohead)
- “I Swallowed a Dragonfly” (Heartless Bastards)
- “Green Is Green” (Fretblanket)
- “You’re Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned” (Alan Parsons Project)
- “(the crux of the cameraman)” (Hallelujah the Hills)
Pet Peeve of the Day: The CDs I’ve bought lately online have the security tag stuck to the tray card itself instead of the jewel case. In order to get it off, I end up destroying the tray card somewhat. Aaargh!
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “someone stole my fork”.
Videogame(s) Played Recently: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)
Signal To Noise, Part 2
Posted on | November 19, 2008 at 8:55 pm | 3 Comments
To recap from Part 1: A month ago, I started experiencing Internet connectivity problems with my DSL (provided by “company Q”). The problem was tracked to “signal disparity” caused by the installation of new fiber-based DSL infrastructure in my neighborhood interfering with my old style Central Office (CO) based DSL line. There is no solution to the problem except upgrading to the fiber service, which would cause me to lose my independent Internet Service Provider. So if I wanted to stick with DSL, I would lose my current ISP and be forced to deal with Q’s default ISP.
I’ve had my old ISP since my earliest days on the Internet when I had a dialup account. They seem to be a small outfit (at least in terms of employees), but that actually works out very well when you need customer service. I never have any problems getting through to anyone and the people there always seem to know what to do. I much prefer this type of personalized service to the impersonal offshore model that larger companies employ. Plus, I can actually understand what they are saying. And they are always very timely with maintenance notifications. When DSL became available in my neighborhood, with the ability to still use the independent ISP I was used to as my ISP, I jumped at it. Not only would I continue to get the same excellent customer service I was used to, but I could keep my main e-mail address, which is tied to so many things. That worked out well for many years. The other choice back then for high speed Internet was a cable modem, but that would’ve mean losing my e-mail address. Plus I loathe my local cable company ever since I had frequent TV service disruptions with them years ago. I’ve been a happy satellite TV subscriber for a long time and I see no reason to bring a filthy cable into my house. This is a Cable Company Free Zone.
So anyway, the prospect of losing my ISP was not an enticing one. It’s even gotten to the point over the years where I’m actually paying more to have an independent ISP than if I had just gone with Q’s default one. It was worth it to me for the reliability and the personalized service. But my choices were to switch to with the cable company, research other Internet providers (satellite? wireless?), or stick with DSL and upgrade to the fiber service and lose my ISP. For reasons outlined above, the cable modem was right out. And I’m too lazy to research other networks; most of them seem pretty expensive, are not available in my area, or have other drawbacks. So I decided to cut the cord and go with the DSL upgrade.
I talked to my brother-in-law (who works for company Q, though he really doesn’t have anything to do with the DSL stuff) and explained my story. He hooked me up with a friend of his at the company who was more involved with DSL and would see what he could do for me. I ended up going to the fiber service and even upgrading to a higher speed (from the “up to” 1.5Mbps service to “up to” 7Mbps). I’m getting a couple of months free and some other incentives. Once I discontinue my account with my independent ISP, my monthly bill will be lower than it was, even with the higher speed. For now, I do have to keep some kind of account with my ISP in order to still be able to use my old e-mail address. I’m going back to a dailup account, and I can still access the mail through a website and don’t need a direct connection. Which reminds that if anyone reading this is still using my old TDE e-mail address, please start using the gmail one. That is the first three letters of my first name and my full last name as one word, at gmail.com. I haven’t even installed the ISP-related bloatware that company Q gave me, since I don’t really have any need of using the e-mail account etc there. All I really need is that connection to the Internet.
So far, so good. I haven’t been having any more connection problems since I upgraded. The faster speed is nice, although when it comes right down to it, I don’t really do that much downloading or video viewing, and the old speed was just fine for normal website surfing. I did have one problem where I kept getting disconnected from VPN every 15 minutes when I tried to work from home with my work laptop, but that actually seemed to be a problem with the new modem rather than the upgraded DSL service. It had started when I got the new modem and I assumed the problem was the connection issue. But when it still kept happening with the upgraded service, I tweaked some VPN settings and then it started working. According to the speed tests, I’m actually getting close to 7Mpbs download speed (and around .7Mpbs upload speed). With my old CO-based DSL service, I was usually only getting around .8Mpbs download speed, not the full 1.5Mpbs. From what I understand, this was because I was so far from the central office, that I was on the edge of being able to get DSL at all. They had to install some kind of booster in the neighborhood (which I think one of the techs referred to as a “remote stinger”) in order for me to get a signal at all with the old service. That contributed to the degradation in service when the fiber service started interfering.
I’ve had a lot of interesting discussions with people from company Q and my ISP about this whole matter. I don’t want to try to remember and document everything I learned, especially since a lot of it was too technical and over my head. But a lot of it really does make me wonder. I’m okay with the way things are now, assuming that the billing works out as advertised (always iffy) and that the service doesn’t start degrading on the new network as more people get added to (which I’ve heard is a possibility). I just know that the first time I have a problem and have to talk to someone overseas I can barely understand, instead of to someone in my local community who knows the score, I’m not going to be happy.
Latre.
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “does anybody have superpowers”.
Videogame(s) Played Yesterday: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)
Signal To Noise
Posted on | November 18, 2008 at 8:56 pm | 6 Comments
Yeah, I know I’ve been pretty silent lately. That’s mostly because I’ve really been enjoying my time off from blogging and I like having time to do other things. But it’s also partly laziness. And it’s also because of the problems I’ve been having with my Internet connection, which have finally been solved. Hopefully.
Therein lies a tale. I get my DSL through my local phone company, which starts with the letter “Q”. My brother-in-law is pretty high up in this company, so I don’t want to disparage them too much. (Plus, he helped me out with my issues.) But there’s a lot that just don’t sit right with me about this whole thing. It all started about a month or so ago when I noticed when surfing at night I would get occasional timeouts (”server not found”, etc). According to the lights on the modem, it looked like the Internet connection was briefly going away and then coming back. As the days passed, the problem got worse and worse. The symptoms were similar to ones I experienced when my DSL modem was going bad. I was on my third modem, which had lasted for awhile, so I figured it was time to get a new one. I called up company Q’s support line during lunch at work and talked to someone obviously offshore who didn’t think the problem was the modem. The modem was leased and I was paying like $3/month. I was annoyed and figured they just didn’t want to replace it. But he told me to call back when I was home and they could diagnose the problem. I didn’t feel like going through all that, so I just went ahead and ordered their latest spiffy new advanced networking modem, as a purchase instead of a rental. I was tired of the leasing game and I wanted a more modern modem anyway. The manufacturer doesn’t even make the old one anymore.
So I hooked up the new modem and it seemed to work (after another call to tech support to get them to tell me how to get to the manual configuration, since their automatic one wasn’t working). But then later that night, I started experiencing the same connection problems. And this new modem has a big old red light that goes on when the connection is broken, so it’s easy to see when it’s having problems. Which was pretty frequently. So I called up my Internet Service Provider (ISP). They ran some tests and said there was no problem on their end, but they could see I was definitely getting a lot of errors and disconnects. They said it was either something in my house or a problem with the wiring coming into it. So they called company Q, which called me back and set up a tech call.
A few days later, the technician showed up and I briefly explained the problem. I told him when the problem started happening, and he knew exactly what it was without even looking at anything. Apparently I had the old Central Office-based (CO) DSL service. He said they recently started running the new Fiber-to-the-Node DSL service in my neighborhood, and the “ipdata cabinet” from that was interfering with the signals of the old CO DSL services. (I later learned they term this issue “Signal Disparity”.) They had been experiencing this issue a lot and their solution was to cut people over to the new fiber service, for the same price. So he was all ready to do that for me.
However, I had learned before from researching DSL speed upgrades that company Q does not partner with independent Internet Service Providers for their fiber service. There are various reasons for this, but it depends on who you talk to. I use an independent ISP for my DSL. In fact, that’s one of the things that initially attracted me to DSL over cable for Internet: I wanted to be able to keep my old dialup ISP, not to mention the e-mail address that goes with it. I asked the tech if upgrading meant I would lose my ISP and he didn’t think so. But then he called a buddy and confirmed that was indeed the case. I asked if there were any other solution to this problem and everyone said No. If I wanted to stay with DSL, I would lose my ISP. If I didn’t switch to the fiber service, the problem would just keep getting worse as more and more people were added to the fiber line. What was I to do?
Stay tuned for the answer in the next blog entry. This one is getting too long and my attention is wandering, as yours must be too.
Latre.
Jogged Today: Yes (@ 52°F)
Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Jogging:
- “Dream World” (Midnight Oil)
- “Cold Blooded” (Engine 88)
- “You And Me” (Mitch Easter)
- “The Vanishing Spies” (Frank Black)
- “Wonder Story” (Bill Nelson)
- “1985″ (Richard Thompson)
- “Here It Goes Again” (OK Go)
- “Black Star” (Radiohead)
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “50 reasons why i’m a bad friend”.
Videogame(s) Played Recently: LittleBigPlanet (PS3), Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)
Gone To Westeros
Posted on | November 12, 2008 at 1:46 pm | 2 Comments
Last day of vacation. Boo hoo!
Some interesting news lately out of Hollywood on the progress of two highly anticipated (by me anyway) possible future HBO shows. Since both of these projects were first announced, there’s been a regime change at HBO which made it look unlikely (according to some people) that either project would see the light of day.
The first one was the proposed adaption of the Garth Ennis/Steve Dillon 66-issue comic book series Preacher, one of the most blasphemous and graphically violent works ever committed to the four-color page. Also, one of the most exciting, funny, and enthralling. The HBO series was to be overseen by Mark Steven Johnson, director of the Daredevil and Ghost Rider movies. Seeing as how average those turned out, I wasn’t entirely looking forward to seeing what he would do with edgier fare. (Let’s not even mention what he did to A Prayer For Owen Meany.) But in interviews, he said he was going to stay faithful to the comics, even going so far as to adapt each individual issue into a separate episode of the TV series. That had a lot of potential. And as such, it was ultimately shot down by the HBO brass.
But recently comes word that it will be adapted instead into a feature film. A previous try at that in the 90s, to have been directed by Tank Girl director Rachel Talalay, er…. tanked. Thankfully. The director of this new version is going to be Sam Mendes, Oscar-winning director of American Beauty and also director of the upcoming Oscar-bait movie Revolutionary Road, which reunites Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. He has previously directed another comic book adaption, Road To Perdition, which was critically acclaimed but didn’t fare that well at the box office. So he does know his way around a graphic novel and he is a great director. This should prove interesting. I just wonder how much of the story he’s going to adapt for the movie. It’s a looong story, and the first part of it (collected as Gone To Texas) is not really as interesting as the rest of it. So I don’t know how well it would turn out if he just did that initial storyline. But I can’t wait to see who’s going to play super-powered preacher Jesse, his ex-girlfriend hitwoman Tulip, and Irish vampire Cassidy.
Around the same time that the HBO Preacher thing was initially bandied about, HBO also announced they were developing an adaption of George R.R. Martin’s seminal fantasy series A Song Of Ice And Fire. And then… nothing. Even though Martin said the project was still rattling around at HBO, no concrete confirmations of movement have been forthcoming and I assumed it was another victim of the leadership change at HBO. But I guess that HBO is now getting serious about this genre stuff due to the success of True Blood (That’s a success? Even though I like it, I thought the ratings numbers were down compared to past HBO successes. I guess the numbers have inched up lately.) So HBO has actually greenlit a pilot for the series. This is no guarantee that the show will make it to air, but it’s certainly an encouraging sign.
Even though the book series is unfinished and I’m only halfway through the most recent book, A Feast For Crows, I declare this series to be the best fantasy books ever written. Or at least the best I’ve read. And like the HBO press releases say, it’s a natural fit for pay cable. It’s more about the (twenty million) characters than the battles, magic, and creatures. (In fact, there’s very little of those last two in the books at all.) So the budget should be doable. And since there’s a lot of sex and violence, it’s not the kind of thing you’d want to see on say the SciFi Channel or in weekend syndication. A feature film would definitely not be able to tell even a fraction of the story (which, admittedly, does seem to wander a bit at times). They are talking about adapting the series as one book per TV season, which sounds about right. Even at that pace though, they’ll have to cut out a lot of ancillary characters and story. And it’s the perfect vehicle for big stars who may want to dabble in the genre and then be gone, since no character is ever safe in Martin’s universe.
So, I’m holding my breath. After what HBO did to Deadwood, Rome, Carnivàle, and John From Cincinnati, I’m a little worried about the whole story getting told once it gets started. But I’m willing to take that chance.
Latre.
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “speed dial worry about misdialing”.
Heaven (19)16
Posted on | November 10, 2008 at 3:12 pm | 4 Comments
I guess it’s Movie Mention Monday, since I missed Movie Review Sunday! Okay, I’ve missed a lot of days since I “came back”, but that’s because of both my laziness and my (still unresolved) Internet problems. I’m on vacation today, so I’d thought I’d sneak in a little ol’ blog entry while I actually have a connection.
My girlfriend got it in her head that she wanted to see the 1978 movie Days of Heaven because of a recommendation she saw somewhere, and so checked it out of the library. I was like “Wha? Isn’t that one of those big-budget three hour-long flops from some formerly A-List director that took years to make and nearly bankrupted a studio?” Turns out I was thinking of Heaven’s Gate from 1980 (and not 1978’s Gates of Heaven either). But if Days of Heaven didn’t also fit that description, it probably should have.
Days of Heaven was directed by reclusive, non-prolific directer Terrence Malick, who has only directed like four movies in 35 years, including the Oscar-nominated best picture The Thin Red Line, which I haven’t seen, but which my friend Pilto describes as “three hours of watching grass grow”. Lucikly, DoH is less than two hours long, although there isn’t much of a story there. And since there isn’t a whole lot of dialog, what story exists has to be gleaned from the actions on the screen. It takes place in 1916 and stars a young Richard Gere as a Chicago steelworker with big, distracting eyebrows who murders his supervisor for some undetailed reason (I’m guessing because the supe insulted his eyebrows). He flees to the wheatfields of Texas along with Brooke Adams, who is pretending to be his sister but is really his lover or his MySpace Friend or accountant or something. I was never totally clear on their relationship. Also tagging along is a young freaky girl played by Linda Manz, who narrates the movie with a really annoying accent/tone of voice, and who also may or may not be related to one or both of them. I was very confused on that point. They all end up working on the farm of a wealthy man played by Sam Shepard, who is apparently dying of some kind of unspecified terminal disease, even though he looks like one of the healthiest, more robust people in the movie. The farmer falls in love with Brooke Adams and gets her to marry him, under the condition that her “brother” and “sister” be allowed to stick around and make trouble. And trouble does ensue. There’s a plague of locusts, a fire, some circus dudes flying biplanes, and a murder or two, but that makes it all sound more exciting than it is.
In the Criterion Collection DVD extras, Gere and Shepard wax nostalgically about the making of the picture, and one of them (I forget which) says that the movie is to be taken as more of a “poem” than an actual film. They claim that there was much more filmed and it had lot more dialog and story, but that was all excised by the director in the editing room (which took two years) in favor of this visual poem. I’ve never been much for watching poems on a 1080p Plasma HDTV, although I suppose that if you do have to watch a poem, that’s one of the better ways to do it. I do have to say that the cinematography is spectacular and the movie does look gorgeous, especially all those scenes of the farmer’s big house sitting all alone on top of the hill with the fields all around. It doesn’t make me want to go live in the Texas panhandle in 1916, but it looks like an okay place to visit.
So, neither N or I was totally thrilled with this, though I’m glad I can knock another “classic” movie off my list. And despite our reaction, she now she really wants to watch Malick’s first big movie Badlands from 1974, since it appears to be not such a snoozefest and neither of us has seen it. So stayed tuned for a Movie Mention of that one eventually.
Latre.
Jogged Fri 11/7 (@ 40°F with a cold, strong wind)
Songs That Came Up On The iPod While Jogging:
- “What Am I Supposed to Do?” (A Flock of Seagulls)
- “I Can’t Imagine the World Without Me” (Echobelly)
- “198090″ (Thunderbirds Are Now!)
- “Use It” (The New Pornographers)
- “Down Among The Dead Men” (Pledge Drive)
- “Here It Is Tomorrow” (Game Theory)
- “Hi-Ya!” (Headlights)
- “Payment For The Babies” (Robert Pollard)
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “what if i’m a bad friend?”.