However, Apple has a very nice set of products:
Right now, I am coding and blogging down in my theater room, outputting my itunes to an airport express connected to my theater receiver, which is then pumping the music out over my Onkyo 7.1 speakers. Sounds good. I could rock the block without getting out of the chair.
I'm thinking if I got a mac mini, I could hook up 2 TB drives, one on firewire (primary), one on USB 2.0 (backup), and rip my whole DVD collection onto it and share it so any itunes in the house could play it. I'd probably connect it to the upstairs TV near the big window that faces the valley, where I could rig up an HDTV antenna and get a usb tuner. I'm still looking into it, but it looks like there are DVR solutions that will run on a mac mini. Then I can put an apple TV in the bedroom and downstairs, and be able to stream captured video off the mini, plus my entire music/movie library.
The only downside is that I can't rip Bluray discs, but I'm mostly renting those right now anyhow. And standard-def DVDs sort of look trashy on my projector, because it is outputting 1080p to a 100" screen, and at that size, DVDs actually look fairly awful. (Which is to say, Blu-ray is a theater-like picture, or better, to my eye; but standard def DVDs are weak.) And I honestly scoffed at HD, initially convinced I couldn't see the difference. Nothing like a 100" screen to change that opinion.
Anyhow, comparing to a Sonos, a combo of AirTunes + Mac Mini + AppleTV in some appropriate setup looks, well, vastly superior to me. Apple getting 1080p output and DVR functionality into a Mini would be a big win. A *really* big win if they had some easy plugin device (or a beefy enough cpu) to handle HDTV encoding. (I figure 99% of people would be happy with encoding one stream and decoding another; many would even be fine with recording tv while watching live, or playing back old, but not both)
It's not a perfect solution, but the relatively cheap Mini/ATV/AirTunes/iPhone combo delivers a LOT of functionality for a relatively low price, it seems. Certainly, I'm quite happy with my first step. Once Kathy is done closing her warehouse down and we can reorg the house a bit, there's a good chance I'll get the other components. (I'm always filing on an extension for my taxes, so I'm stimulus-free so far, but I'll file soon. It would probably be relatively stimulating to blow it on apple, even though the mfging is done in China.)
]]>
It feels like America has been binging, and we haven't yet reformulated our thinking to realize: wait, maybe this is our fault.
John McCain has just suggested we suspend the gas tax. Okay, so this is clearly political pandering, but you have to ask: why should we do that? Let's look at this:
In short, we made our bed. Why should the government encourage us to continue on the binge? We need to adjust our behavior, not subsidize bad choices.
This is just another instance in a long line of issues:
So, what do we do to fix it? It's not that hard. Get ready for the pinch.
(1) End the War. We cannot afford it, and it's that simple.
(2) Take next year's supplemental, and stick it into renewable energy instead. Perhaps Solar Electric Thermal.
(3) Listen to the Oracle of Omaha, and end the trade deficit. We can do it quickly and equitably.
(4) Balance the damn budget. Seriously. I don't care if you have to put the military on a shoestring and eliminate medicare. If government programs are an unfortunate necessity, debt-financed government programs are an abomination.
This is it. We're entering an Era of Accountability. At this rate, we'll be back to a cash economy without N-tiered debt derivatives soon. Live within your means, and that includes your energy consumption. It has to be a mantra, now, rather than later.
]]>The iPhone continues to rock muh sox. The fact that no pressure is needed for this keypad is a huge ergonomic benefit that, with all the talk of "text thumb", I'm surprised we haven't heard more of. The autocorrect on this thing is genius.
I got to meet a guy today I only know online from coh, which was cool.
I have seriously had my main two book ideas percolating, and I think real writing is near. I need to do some physics research for one. When I get home I will likely be doing some consulting work again. Seems like I will be quite busy, but opportunity doesn't let you pick your schedule.
A guy from work has been pushing me to take swim lessons and swim on a regular schedule, and I think I'll jump on it... I am by no means in the worst shape, but I'd like to get back to a fully fit weight and tone, and I'm feeling empowered lately. I will be busy... Have to cut some game time. Oh well.
]]>
I r a blogger!!
Some fuzzy sea change is occuring in my personal life.
The thought which has dominated my thoughts lately is: oh, my, GOD! Life is so short. We should all have hundreds of years. And if we learn to get the fuck along, we WILL have that. Ladies and Gentlemen, we are "On the Cusp". I am also on the cusp, because I am willing to embrace or destroy for happiness. And the satisfaction of knowing I have a path to walk is great. I have to take steps. Life is too short.
We must not waste a day. The universe is filled with infinite variety and our pathetic lifespan does not allow enough... not enough a fraction of enough... of the experiences available. Emrace, extend.
]]>Note to producers/writers, and this one is free: Story arcs have to end. I don't know if Wil watched Alias, but it drove me nuts with this. Smallville drives me nuts. But Heroes is different.
]]> Heroes is definitely my wet dream of a show. I've said it to friends and my wife: if I came up with a show, it might look just like this. I don't love every character, but none of them drive me nuts. Given the subject matter, the plot is remarkably internally consistent. This is a primary rule: you can be as ridiculous as you want with your premises, so long as you supply verisimilitude. Smallville drove me nuts, for example. Last season, Clark (Superman in his late teens/early 20s) reveals his love and his "secret" to Lana. She is killed. He convinces his dead father (don't ask) to undo it; he does, but he says someone has to pay the price. Clark's father, due to Lana NOT doing what she did, ends up in a circumstance where he dies instead, when he would have lived.The thing is, before that, Clark's father had "saved" Clark, and he told him: you died because you didn't listen, and now someone else will pay the price in your stead because you're too important. "Someone close to you". That someone turned out to be Lana. Clarked begged off - not Lana. So it was his Earthly father instead. Okay. But Clark remains idiotically convinced that his telling Lana caused her death, when it most assuredly did not. And now her death was averted because his father was taken instead, and he refuses to tell her now, and she ends up with Lex Luthor. Doubleewe Tee Eff. Bee. Bee. Queue. It is nearly impossible to imagine someone in Clark's position not realizing: hey, my father died and took her place. Her death was fated for my mistake; he told me that in advance. But now my dad paid. And damnit, I can't undo it - but now I can tell Lana without her dying.
But no.
The show is rife with inconsistency like that. There's this willfull character/plot ignorance.
There's twists like Lionel Luthor trying to hook up with Clark's widowed mother. He's clearly NOT reformed, yet he also makes an attempt to sacrafice himself to save her (apparently). Could he just want into her pants? It makes no sense. He could have any number of hot chicks. He clearly has disdain for morality, but it's also always for selfish reasons. That is, he's not evil to be evil, he's just sociopathic, entitled, and supremely self centered. For him, it's all about having a metric fuckton of money and power. His relationship with Lex is multifaceted, but it's always so dry, it's hard to puzzle out. He seems to save Lex periodically, even though it seems fairly certain he tried to kill him once too. He is Lex's rival for power in many things, and claims and occasionally acts like he wants his son to fill his shoes, but he doesn't actually ever give anything in terms of information or advice that would give Lex a real edge. If anything, he just prods him with a bit of mockey.
Enough about Smallville.
Heroes. So, it's mysterious, but it continues to reveal. It has a plot, but the plot has a clear arc. There are many subplots, but the overplot is clear: NY is going up in a nuclear cloud if the Heroes don't stop it. Along the way, we see characters develop (personality and powerwise). Some of them we still need a lot more to see a full picture. Nathan Petrelli, for example, is probably the show's most inconsistent character, although last week showed an interesting side of him. Previously, he seemed to be fairly amoral and completely self-centered. Then you see he was going to try to prosecute Linderman. But now he's in bed with him. But clearly his self-interest is deep seated: he FLEW out of his benz while driving, ending up safe but letting his wife crash and be paralyzed. I have the feeling some critical future plot stuff may hinge on Petrelli/Petrelli interaction.
Hiro is awesome, of course. Not only is his character endearing and consistent - just a wide eyed idealist who wants to fill the shoes of Heroes that were fiction before this burst of evolution, we see this future him, this foreshadowing where he's hip, carries a Katana, lost his accent, and is generally looking badass. What a fascinating evolution. We're not likely to ever even see it on the show, but it's sure interesting.
Bennett - his evil to good business was a bit of trickery on the part of the show creators/writers. But it was good. In the end, you can see how he wasn't necessarily the bad guy. Clearly his methods are somewhat of the end-justifies-the-means version; like forcing Isaac to paint Claire by shooting up heroin. And yet, when you contrast him to the driven and clearly insane and ludicrously dangerous Sylar, well - it feels a bit like ordering the assassination of Hitler. Is it immoral? Maybe. I'm not sure if I'm an absolutist. I wrote an essay in college which rejected hedonism and relative morality in general, but I'm not sure if some branch of utilitarianism has crept over me since then. Let's ask this question: you can hook an innocent child up to a device. It will deliver almost infinite amount of pain and suffering to them as they grow older, and about when they reach adulthood, they will die and need to be replaced by another suffering child. However, through some mechanism, this sacrafice will keep the entire world healthy. Disease and hunger will be literally eradicated. Is it immoral to do this to a child? What if one volunteers? What if it was an adult, and they volunteered? Or going back to Hitler, if you could return, and cap Hitler in art school, would you, knowing you'd save at least 35 million lives? (Or, perhaps, unchecked by Germany, Stalin would have steamrolled a slew of countries and killed a lot more than the 3 million or so he did kill.
I'm Mr. Tangent tonight. But Heroes has this verisimilitude. You see people behave, week to week, in a generally consistent fashion. They manage to surprise you and yet remain in the spirit of that consistency. I think the more outrageous your premise, the more critical the verisimilitude is. That is, you must make it so that viewers (or readers, or players, depending on the medium) can put themselves in the shoes of the characters, imagine themselves in those circumstances, and then BELIEVE that they would act as the characters do. You can have pronounced character flaws that the viewers would never imagine themselves having, but they can imagine SOMEONE having them, so it's okay. Sylar is believable. Especially now. Hiro is believable. Peter is believable. The hardest person to "believe" so far is Nathan, but part of that is because he's so damn cagey as a character, there's not a lot of ways to show why he's doing what he's doing. There's nothing blatantly inconsistent. Really, my major issue is with his total nonchalance with his power. He flies -- apparently at supersonic speeds -- and seems to think that despite the fact that he and many others with powers and popping up, that his destiny is to run for public office in the pocket of a criminal. Hrmm.
The great part, however, is I can see Heroes ending. I'd like to see the nuclear plot end this season, and a new one quickly get introduced. Alternately, they can cliffhang this season, wrap it early next season, then spring into a new plot. But I think a full season is about the maximum duration of a plot. Re-use the characters, not the plot. I don't want the SHOW to end, just the story arc.
Anyhow, regardless, one thing I can wholeheartedly agree on: Heroes is excellent. Characters, plot, writing, consistency, genre - it's seriously not the sort of thing I expected to see. So far. But then again, Alias was this good for a season. That was JJ Abrams work before Lost. Heroes still has to get more track record before I call it the best show ever. But it is noticeable how my drive to watch Smallville is starting to slack off. Heroes: filling the soul of my inner comic nerd. And it is so much more satisfying than Smallville. I hope Smallville improves but I have to say: Clark, I don't need you any more.
]]>Abraham Lincoln
]]>http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?t=165539
http://www.knitemare.org/cats/
]]>Anyhow, there are simply not enough hours in the day. I actually had the urge to do work for DAZ too! Apparently a full time week isn't enough there either. I have like 5 projects I'm working on, all of them could use more time. I'm working hard to focus on work more at work and be less of an infojunkie (although that has ancillary benefits for work, but it still is probably less than optimal).
I think I need a better phone. I definitely want to upgrade to something that can run web apps like Bloglines. How sweet would that be? I think bloglines even HAS a mobile version. But that would help me keep up.
Everything I did, I wanted to do more of.
I wanted to play CoH longer.
I wanted to restart and replay NWN2. (For that matter, I wanted to try some of the high profile mods for NWN1 that have come out recently)
I wanted to work on my mod more.
I wanted to read more. (State of Fear is next on my slate)
I wanted to play more poker
On top of that, I want more time with Kathy and Sarah, but I'm turning into a mental action junky. I'm constantly thinking of things to do and try, and my imagination and planning and excitement for all the stuff I'm doing are running high. When I sit down to do stuff with them, it's often at a much slower pace. Even when we go out, I'm often mentally somewhere else, writing code or a book or calculating odds or planning a module all in my head.
]]>This is true, of course. But it's a lot more pandemic than they point out.
Of course, X-files is probably the best example. There WAS an overarcing plot, but it should have been resolved. Lots of side plots and unrelated episodes are fine when you have rich characters to explore, but eventually, audiences want resolutions. Where's the drama that literally ties off all the plot lines in a pretty bow? Does that mean the show has to end, or can the characters then begin a new arc?
Dramas built on long term plots should have arcs to resolve them, and a schedule for it. And they should stick to them.
I'm watching the excellent Heroes, and hoping it does not succumb to this disease; it had better not.
]]>