Lacking camerawork

The oddest things prompt me to post to this underutilized blog.

This month's post is prompted by a YouTube video, posted on the videogame blog Kotaku. The blogger describes the cinematography thusly:

"The camera looks to be mounted on a radio controlled helicopter piloted by a drunk being tasered."

I liked that. I strive not to have my camera shots look like that.


Kotaku: Singapore Cosplayers Go Crazy For Ouendan

DVD sales are tanking

Interesting article on Ars about, well, DVD sales tanking. I know I'm getting a LOT fewer DVDs than I used to... and it's not like I'm getting HD-DVDs instead. I blame it on their not being anything I want to buy, frankly.


Movie fans saying "bah humbug"...

The cause of the Vietnam and Iraq wars?

I'm sure it will come as no surprise that the villain is: Helvetica.

Just finished watching a documentary on, yes, Helvetica, and I really enjoyed it. You know, not only does Netflix rock for renting movies, they rock for helping to produce documentaries via their Red Envelope initiative. I mean, how else are you going to get money to make a documentary about a friggin' typeface?

And an excellent documentary it was: they talked to old school typographers, young typographers, people who hate Helvetica with a passion, people who embrace Helvetica... and intersperse it with examples of Helvetica throughout the world, some good, some bad.

The editing was great, the music was very good, cinematography was excellent. I guess, given that this is basically a documentary on graphic design, they couldn't afford not to have a top-notch visual style in their film.

No, I couldn't sell either Maria or my mom on watching this with me. Oh well, their loss, it's not for them.

Helvetica documentary home page

Dancing w/Stars comments

I can't believe that the season is almost over and I haven't made hardly any comments about this year's competition. Well, actually, I can believe it. But I'll comment anyway.

* I'm rooting for Mel B to take it all. Her smile is infectious and she's done a great job in both the technical and the performance aspects. And yes, I did manage to notice her above her neck. Loved her waltz to "Somebody to Love" by Queen last night.

* Helio is quite good, has been from the start, but it's time to give the crown to a woman again. The men have had their run. Of course, I'm glad Helio has stuck in for this long because it gives Julianne more screen time. Hubba hubba.

* And speaking of Julianne, her brother's done very well this year. Derek is an inventive choreographer and has done a great job with Jennie Garth. I wouldn't mind if she won, but I just don't think she has the performance down to get it. Jennie's lookin' like home cookin', by the way. Seems that she's lost a lot of weight over the weeks. Maybe I should try that weight-loss regimen.

* Finally, Marie. She's done great, I've rooted for her, but I think if she makes it into the final, it won't be fair to whomever she bumps out of the way. She's doing a lot better than this 47-year-old could do, but she's just not at the other three's level. Quite the entertainer, though!

Final note: it's very interesting to see how the writer's strike has even hit this show--everyone's comments are actually more natural and less, well, scripted.

Quote from 30 Rock last night

Yes, the quote actually drove me to post it on the blog, which has been dormant as of late...

Tina Fey: "People are going to show up expecting all this great stuff and then they're going to be disappointed and angry. . ."
Tracey Morgan: "Just like Colonial Williamsburg."

Heh!

Ubuntu back in business

Went with a nice clean new install of 7.10... backed up my documents and then wiped the partition. Probably for the best, I've now cleared out all kinds of junk that I've probably accumulated. The install from CD went incredibly smoothly, unlike doing the update over the network which failed miserably.

Interesting note that in order to configure compiz the way I'm used to, you have to install "ccsm" before you can turn on the cube and all the snazzy animations. Here's the page that told me all about that.

Quite displeased with Death Proof

No, that's not some new utility to keep your computer from crashing. It's Tarantino's half of the Grindhouse movie that did an enormous belly flop earlier this year.

He expanded his half of the movie and released it separately from Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror, even going so far as to submit it to Cannes. My question is: why?

Maybe I'm too old to be a Tarantino fanboy anymore, or maybe I'm just getting cranky. But I was expecting more than the same old Tarantino stuff. There's a fine line between tossing out references to your previous movies to make the fanboys happy, and rehashing all your old material yet another time. Let's make a list: foot fetishes, foot massages, out-of-trunk shot, Big Kahuna burgers, "tasty beverages," Red Apple cigarettes... I'm sure I'm forgetting quite a few at this point.

I also found the ending annoying on multiple levels. I won't go into specifics to avoid spoilers, but my many many MANY readers can always ask for them. The abruptness alone was annoying. Maybe it's something that grindhouse pics do, but it was annoying nonetheless.

The only scene that did anything for me was when Kurt Russell was talking to "Butterfly" just before the lap dance--tension-filled and menacing. Other than that? Didn't like it at all.

Upgrade to Gutsy went not so well

Maybe I should have installed from a CD... instead I used update-manager to try to update my system from 7.04 (Feisty) to 7.10 (Gutsy). It took a loooong time to download all the files, then started taking even looooooooonger (yes, requiring even more Os) to actually install the files. I'm talking the better part of a day here. That should have tipped me off. Then, seemingly before all files had a chance to install fully, the update-manager window grayed out. Yep, now there's trouble.

On reboot, it thinks 7.10 is installed, and things work for the most part, but what isn't working is the nvidia driver. No nvidia driver, no compiz, no compiz, no happy. Will have to mess with this some more, or just give up, back up my home folder and some key config files, and start from scratch.

Halo 3 deflates Hollywood box office?

Interesting theory... apparently the October box office is down dramatically, and some analysts believe it's due to Halo 3's release in late September. $200-$300 million spent on Halo 3 in the first week or two--yeah, that could put a dent in things.

Bad Box Office Sales Blamed on Halo 3

New 360 and Freezing Forza

My 360 did arrive on Thursday as scheduled. Actually, it wasn't my 360, it was a refurbished 360 sent "to expedite the repair of your console" or some such phrase. The fact that it was a different 360 comes into play in a bit.

Microsoft was also nice enough to send along a 1 month extension to my Live membership. It's not much but it's something.

Interestingly, there was a orange slip of paper that was some kind of quality checklist stating what was done to the unit and how it was packed... I'm not really sure what all was done to it as the checklist was in Spanish.

So, on with the games, right? Almost. Got to play Halo 3 finally. Yes, I suck at Halo 3, I was able to confirm that. All other games seem to play just fine... with the exception of Forza 2. Almost every race I've done with it ends in a freeze. The console simply freezes up and won't respond to anything but powering down. This never happened with the old 360, just this new one, as if the freezing is component-dependent. Turn 10 doesn't admit to this on their forums, so it looks like I have no recourse or fix. I probably just won't play this game anymore... it's very frustrating to get 6 laps into a 7 or 8 lap race, and then have the game freeze. Grr.

Homecoming?

Microsoft tells me that my 360 is on its way back to me, hopefully never to red-ring again. Guess I won't believe it until I see it but I've got my fingers crossed. But now the dilemma is: do I finish Bioshock or start Halo 3?

ATM was hot, hot, HOT!

Ran the Army Ten Miler on Sunday and boy was it hot. Not as bad as the Chicago Marathon, of course... sounds like 1/4 of the runners in that didn't finish and another fourth didn't even try to run in 90-degree temps. But it was plenty hot, and it showed in our times... I think we did 8:50 miles. Wasn't planning on running sub-8s as I'm heavier than I'd like, but it's nice to have another excuse for not doing so.

Props to GameStop

Yes, GameStop of all companies.

I headed back in to my local store after finding my scratched game disc, and stood in line with all the people picking up their copy of Halo 3. While in line, I heard a customer call in saying they had a scratched disc too. The manager said "bring it in, we'll pull a game disc out of one of our standard H3 boxes and swap discs with you." And that was the same thing they did for me... no hassle, no having to wait and send my disc back to Microsoft, just a quick fast swap.

Excellent customer service, GameStop!!!

Microsoft engineering strikes again

This time with the Halo 3 packaging. More specifically, the extended edition that includes some DVDs and other swag. I'd read that there were problems with some discs working loose and getting scratched in shipment. But that couldn't happen to mine, could it?

Of course it could! Happened to me and my friend Dave too (hi Dave!). How special. Now I get to go back to GameStop and see what they can do about it. That better be "let me open a bunch of them until I find one that isn't scratched..."

Wii beats 360 in Dover too

I'd seen that there was going to be a NASCAR race at the racetrack in Dover, Delaware, featuring a Halo 3 car and a Wii car.

The Wii car finished in the top 5.

The Halo 3 car blew its engine and did not finish.

"Ironic" isn't a strong enough word for these happenings.

Kotaku: Lol: Halo Car Red Rings, Wii Car Takes Third in Race

A very common plain white box

I finally got the return shipping box for my dead Xbox 360. Got it all packed away and took it to my nearest UPS Store to be mailed.

I should note that the shipping box has nothing on it that indicates that it's a 360, or it's from Microsoft, or anything. It's just a plain white shipping box.

The second I walk to the counter, the guy says "Dead Xbox, huh?"

Sir Christopher (my Xbox 360 woes continue)

Per my posts below, I called Microsoft on Saturday to report my red-ringed 360. They said they'd send a box out for me. As of yesterday I hadn't seen the box, so I thought I'd call Microsoft to find out what was up.

I innocently, foolishly, naively called the Xbox Service number. After trying for 10 minutes to get past "Max," the automated voice mail guy, I finally found my way into some menu that allowed me to say "agent" to speak to a human.

Now, I called at 9:00AM Redmond Time. I fully expected to speak to a person who spoke English as their native language. Uh, no. I got someone in a call center in India who kept calling me "Sir Christopher." A fine title upgrade but still, I'd rather talk to a 20-something dude like I did when I opened my repair order.

After confirming all kinds of annoying information about me, the guy in Bangalore or wherever went away for a few minutes with my reference number. When he got back on the phone, he said "Thank you for waiting Sir Christopher, I show that your console is being repaired and will be ready in 2 to 3 business weeks." I pointed out that that would be a very good trick, since I hadn't sent it back yet, and that I was calling to find out where my shipping box was.

This confused him. He went away for about 10 minutes this time. He finally came back, and stated that I should receive the box in 3 to 5 business days. I asked if the box has been sent yet. This confused him too so he repeats the "3 to 5 business days" line again.

At this point I gave up and decided to just hope that this meant the box had already been sent out, and that it will be here in 3 to 5 business days from, say, last Monday, which was the first business day after I reported the problem.

Lesson: call Xbox Support on Saturdays because for some reason your call doesn't go to India then.

Well, that'll teach me

Teach me to court fate, that is, and post about things like Microsoft's Xbox 360 woes.

Went to go turn on the 360 for some gaming now that the kids are asleep, and boom, there's the red ring of death.

Ironically enough, I'd been playing Forza 2 earlier, had gotten half way through one set of races, and had considered just leaving it on and paused, but thought, noooooo, don't want to risk overworking the poor machine and red-ringing it.

Ugh. I better have a functioning 360 back in my hot little hands in time for Halo 3....

Kotaku red rings

Note to Microsoft: if you only have one shot at fixing one single Xbox 360 so that it no longer red-rings, you should probably consider taking that one shot with the red-ringed 360 of Kotaku blogger Brian Ashcraft. Because when it red rings, and he sends it back, and it's returned after being out 22 days, and he plugs it in, and after five whole minutes IT RED RINGS AGAIN... well, he just might be unhappy about that, and he might just post something on the blog about it, and a bunch of hard-core gamers might read about it and wonder WTF Microsoft is doing.

Kotaku -- In Five Minutes Flat: Bashcraft's "Fixed" Xbox 360 Dies. Again.

Onion article on 4th grade snack trading

I'm using The Onion's pre-made HTML to link to their article, which I found funny, since we are often tasked with packing various trade-worthy snacks into our kids' lunchboxes.

Historic Pretzels-For-Little Debbie Swap Sparks Heavy Lunchtime Trading

New iPods, oooh

Will have to try them out next time at my friendly neighborhood Apple store. People don't like the look of the iPod nano "phatty"; my bigger concern is whether you can really watch a video on that screen. You can certainly watch movies on the iPod touch, but at $349 for the 16GB model, why not just get an iPhone, particularly at the new $399 price (which must have REALLY made a lot of early adopters REALLY cheesed off).

Beryl white screen of death

Hey there, long time no blog. Just some quick notes about some recent Ubuntu woes. All of a sudden I'd been getting a problem referred to as the "white screen of death," where the screen would go white right after the desktop appeared. For some reason I thought it was related to Compiz Fusion, but as it turns out it was a Beryl problem. I didn't need to have Beryl any more, so I uninstalled it, and the white screen of death disappeared. Whew.

Problem was, Compiz broke as a result of all my fiddling. The usual story with window decorations not appearing. I tried a bunch of things (including a script that is supposed to download the latest source and compile it; that didn't work at all), but finally got it going along with Compiz Fusion Icon, which is very convenient. I'll try to post the links later.

Later: OK, here is the link that describes how to just remove Beryl, which is how I fixed the white screen problem. And here is the latest howto I followed on getting compiz-fusion running. Interestingly they recommend using a repository from one of the compiz-fusion programmers and NOT the oft-recommended Trevino repository. All I know is that I did it and it worked (with the only snag that, for some reason, compiz is constantly showing up as having an update available.).

Compiz-fusion in a few easy steps

Well, they seem easy to me, easy enough that I'm going to post a link to them here in case I ever need to redo my Ubuntu setup from scratch. If you have a computer laying around doing nothing, you should try Ubuntu on it, and if you try Ubuntu on it (and have an Nvidia graphics card), you should try compiz-fusion on it.

How To: Enable compiz-fusion in Ubuntu Feisty

Timesink alert! Viva Pinata coming to DS!

Now this is big news. I really hope the game is more successful on the DS than it was on the 360... it's certainly more likely to hit its target market on the DS. I know I'm getting two, probably three copies. It was very annoying not to be able to send pinatas to the kids, since they don't have Xbox Live accounts, but I'm assuming the DS will make it easy-peasey to send pinatas wirelessly. Let the mating and eating and trading begin! Well, let it begin sometime next year, anyway...

Viva Pinata coming to DS

This is why I hate reading novels

We'd pre-ordered Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows from Amazon.com a while back. However, as the big day approached, we realized that one copy might not actually do it, since both Maria and I wanted to read it as soon as possible to avoid spoilers, and Anna wants to read it promptly as well (having just finished Half-Blood Prince).

So, profligately (is that a word), Maria bought a copy Saturday at Barnes & Noble, before delivery of our Amazon.com copy. She started reading it on the way back from the book store. Once the post office delivered the second copy, I started reading that.

I read it Saturday night, parts of Sunday during the day(including during a drive to the mall), and then in a final push to finish it up, stayed up last night until one-bleeping-ten AM. Remember, I'm supposed to wake up at 4:45AM to go running. I decided that that would be a Very Bad Idea and "slept in" until 6AM.

You just don't run into that situation when you're reading Editing Techniques for Final Cut Pro or DHTML for Dummies.

PS: spoiler-free brief review--it was very good.

Boring Ubuntu reminder post

A reminder for me to check out this page for some hints on improving Ubuntu performance...

How to tune your Ubuntu PC for faster performance

EDIT: Well, turns out the page is an exact duplicate of a page I found elsewhere. Not sure who's ripping off whom. Anyhow, the adjustment to "swappiness" from 60 to 10 seems to have helped (edit /etc/sysctl.conf and change swappiness setting), as has the setting to allow faster booting and enable some multithreadedness (edit /etc/init.d/rc and make "CONCURRENCY=shell"), but the most impressive one was freeing up some RAM. The method has changed, though: this thread in Ubuntu forums describes what you do to turn off tty2-6. It reduced my RAM usage from 40% to 20%! (You basically edit /etc/default/console-setup file and change a line to "/dev/tty[1-2]", then go to /etc/event.d/ and edit the tty files that you DO NOT want by commenting out lines starting with "start on runlevel").

Compiz Fusion is incredible

I'd heard a while back that the Linux "eye candy" known as Beryl was going to merge back with its predecessor Compiz. A few days ago I saw they'd agreed on a name: Compiz Fusion. While not exactly the best name in the world, it got me interested in seeing what new things they might have added to arguably the coolest computer interface out there today.

Well, amazingly, they've made it even cooler.

I followed instructions similar to these, updated all the appropriate packages and then ran the new Compiz manually. Oh my stars and garters, how awesome. The rotating cube rotates much smoother (although not as fast), and the Desktop Wall option is what Apple's Spaces should have been--way cool to look at and functional to boot. I can do without "fire writing" but hey, that's fine, I just turn that off.

Although it's often dismissed as just "eye candy" I really like how it allows me to make a desktop for different functions. And the new Grouping option lets you link windows together for even more functionality. The fact that they've wrapped this functionality in a pretty package (that takes up hardly any CPU time thanks to graphic card acceleration, by the way) helps to make it fun to use, which isn't a bad thing.

I should try to make a screen recording of some of my Compiz Fusion stuff, but in the meantime, here's a YouTube video showing it off. Try to ignore the dumb scrolling titles in the beginning.

Rosegarden is successfully pruned

Yahoo, I got me a working Rosegarden (see previous post)!

First of all, the problems with the Yamaha P-70 and MIDI were all cured with (suspiciously) the use of a Yamaha USB to MIDI adapter. Guess my M-Audio is hitting eBay soon. Then, although I got Timidity working as a software synth in Rosegarden, the latency was really noticeable... big delay from hitting the keys to hearing the sound. Qsynth seemed to work better but was horribly out of tune. Following a hint, I changed the sample rate for both Qsynth and JACK to 48K, and whammo! No latency, all in tune, much better sounding due to a little reverb action in Qsynth. Works great!

Big Trouble in Little MythTV

I think it's possible that MythTV, my digital video recorder of choice, may be coming to a screeching end very soon. Yesterday Zap2It Labs, the group that was providing all of us MythTV users with program guide data, announced they were going to stop the service in September of this year. It'd been free up to this point (you were asked to take a survey every three months or so), but apparently some groups were somehow using the data to generate income, which was against the agreement.

Anyhow, the likelihood that they would accept cash from end-users is slim, and the alternative--"web scraping" sites to come up with listings--is a poor one.

No word yet from the lead developer of MythTV, Isaac Richards, but in mailing list postings he comes off as such a big PITA that it wouldn't surprise me if he said he was taking his ball and going home and stopping development of MythTV.

If so, hello SageTV...

America's Got Talent

Brief notes on this show:

* I haven't been blown away by any of the people going on to the next round.
* Why are there two Brit judges?
* Sharon Osbourne is oddly attractive.

An overgrown MIDI Rosegarden

Since the kids still seem to be enjoying piano lessons, I took some slush fund money and bought a digital piano with 88 weighted keys, rather than having them practice any more on an electronic keyboard with no piano action. I got a Yamaha P-70, very nice sound, not too unreasonable a price.

Since I was getting a nice keyboard, I thought it would be nice to get back into the MIDI world. I'd played with MIDI since waaaay back in the days of the original Macintoshes. I had one of Mark of the Unicorn's first MIDI interfaces, and at one point had a MIDI setup that included an E-Mu Proteus and a Korg Wavestation. I sold all that when I moved down here, so it's been 10 years since I've played with anything MIDI.

Since my Ubuntu machine is closest to the keyboard, I thought I'd see what the world of open source software offered MIDI-wise. So I installed Ubuntu Studio, an AV-oriented package of tools that even comes along with a low-latency kernel. The USB to MIDI interface (an M-Audio MidiSport Uno) was recognized right away. The only problem is sorting out all the software. There's a program aptly named JACK that handles all the connections, both MIDI and audio, from any music-based program that's running. The main sequencer is Rosegarden, and there's a software synth that uses soundfonts called QSynth.

Theoretically, all this stuff should work together. Well, I can get Rosegarden to play a MIDI file out to my P-70, but I can't seem to figure out how to send program change info to the P-70, or to get QSynth to play along. Plus, the sound font I downloaded is way out of tune with the P-70. Oh, and something is totally screwed up with either the P-70's MIDI output, or how it interacts with the M-Audio MIDI interface, as it won't record or work as a controller for sound playback unless I do this weird voodoo-like setup on it (set doubled voices and make sure both are tuned to +0 octaves).

On the Mac, GarageBand is certainly a much easier program to set up (plug in the interface, do the P-70 voodoo setup thing, play!), but it's not a MIDI sequencer and so doesn't play MIDI data back out to the P-70.

So, regardless of where I do it, it's yet another rat's nest. Oh well, at least the piano has some nice built-in demo songs.

Ubuntu car

Since I got all multi-media-ey with that Kevin Smith post, and since I want to set a record for the most number of labels for a single post to my blog, I'm posting a picture of my virtual Honda CRX that I'm driving around in the Xbox 360 game Forza Motorsport 2.

One of the many cool things about the game is that you can design your own graphics. There are lots of people who have done some amazing bits of artwork for their cars, particularly considering that they're not bitmaps, they're hundreds (or sometimes thousands) of layers of simple objects, layered and colored to look right. I soooo don't have that kind of time on my hands, so instead I went for something simple: the Ubuntu logo. It turned out OK. When I have more time on my hands, I might try to spell out "ubuntu" in that rounded font of theirs... which means tediously resizing multiple rectangles, circles, and arcs.

Oh, and the driving part of Forza 2 is pretty fun too. :)

Superman Returns and Kevin Smith

I've started watching this on the treadmill and frankly, the main thing I'm thinking about is Kevin Smith's story about meeting Jon Peters back when he was writing a version of the script.

Hey, thanks to the miracle of YouTube, I'll link to the clip! It's long, about 19 minutes, but it's subtitled in Spanish (you can learn how to say lots of dirty words in Spanish), and at least so far, it's way more entertaining than Superman Returns.

Lost finale -- finally saw it

No spoilers here--I simply thought it was quite good, with a twist at the end that is making me want to start watching again.

Season finales

I'll start with Dancing with the Stars first... as usual I fast-forwarded through most of it. I'm glad that Apolo won, but I'd like to know if it's because he was the better dancer (which he was), or if it was because he was the youngest dancer, or had the (arguably) hottest partner. I'm disappointed that Laila came in third, but it brings up an interesting point... I bet if they got annother female athlete -- but this time maybe someone like a former figure skater -- she might be able to finally get a win for the girls in the finals. Just for equity's sake it'd be nice to see a woman win one.

It was also very interesting to see that the Dancing finale almost beat American Idol in the ratings. Bet ABC's happy about that.

Now, 24... firstly, I love my MythTV at times. It's a pain in the ass quite often, but when it's good, it's good... and to have the ability to watch the two-hour finale in a single hour (thanks to commercial removal and 1.2x speed playback) was a big timesaver. And I'm glad I saved the time, too, because JEEZ what a snore of a finale. (SPOILER ALERT!) Even at 1.2x speed, it seemed like Doyle and the kid were standing around forever. How anticlimactic was the showdown between Jack and his dad? And he better not show up alive next season even though they left the door wide open for it. And where did they scramble those F-18s from? Kansas? 30 minutes to get to the oil platform? C'mon. Yet, when Jack gets dropped into the ocean, he's able to get to the Heller house in a couple of minutes (with no car as far as we can tell). Oh, and I forgot to mention Chloe. WHO CARES?!? They ruined Chloe this season. And the ending? Ugh. Again, this is me, not caring.

Haven't seen the Lost finale yet--yes, I started watching again, but only because of time compression and skipping. Can't be bothered that much with this show any more.

Inside football, er, videogames

I like videogames. I suck at playing them, but I like reading about the industry. I subscribed to Next Generation magazine way back when Lara Croft was one of its first covers.

A bunch of links have been made to a back-and-forth email exchange between videogame journalists N'Gai Croal and Geoff Keighley, where they discuss the latest sales figures on both game platforms and software. I particularly agreed with N'Gai's point about how many people are getting the Wii in spite of its lack of HD graphics... mainly because most people are ignorant about HD in general. I'm always shocked when I go into a store (or worse, into someone's house) and see that their flat-panel TV is displaying an SD signal, but given the significant numbers of people who don't realize that they're not displaying an HD signal on their multi-thousand-dollar display, I probably shouldn't be so shocked.

Anyhow, interesting read, if you like this kind of thing. Which I do.

Level Up: Monday Morning Quarterbacking

Hard Boiled in PS3 Stranglehold? Aaugh!

Oh, this is just too painful. The John Woo directed videogame called Stranglehold (featuring a digital Chow Yun-Fat) is coming out in a few months on Xbox 360 and PS3. But the PS3 version has an exclusive extra, namely, a HD version of Woo's film Hard Boiled right on the stinkin' Blu-Ray disc. Aw man! Well, maybe I can hold off getting the PS3 until Little Big Planet comes out, but it's getting harder and harder to resist (particularly with GameStop offering $100 for your PS2 if you buy a PS3...)

Hard Boiled Included with PS3 Version of Stranglehold

The lawlessness of Gonzales (and a 24 tie-in)

I don't do many political posts but today's news brings a story that is just mind-boggling.

In testimony before the Senate yesterday, former deputy Attorney General James Comey provided more details about an incident that was downplayed for a number of years, but if there is any justice in the world (or, for that matter, in the Justice Department), will start to see the light of day.

On March 10, 2004, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was in the hospital after having just undergone emergency appendectomy surgery. He had put his deputy, Comey, at the head of Justice while he recovered. Comey had refused to sign off on a plan by Chief of Staff Andy Card and (wait for it) then-White House council Alberto "VO5" Gonzales, to continue a warrantless wiretapping program that had been going on for quite some time. Comey and DOJ lawyers concluded that the program was illegal and would not agree to it.

Comey is tipped off that Card and Gonzales had decided to do an end-around by going to Ashcroft in the hospital and get his sign-off on the plan. He gets his security detail to speed him to the hospital as fast as they can. They get there and he and his detail arrive at Ashcroft's side just before Card and Gonzales walk in.

The FBI acting director, Robert Mueller, calls and tells one of Comey's security detail that under no circumstances should they allow Comey to be removed from the room.

Ashcroft refuses to sign the plan. He points to Comey and points out that he is the acting Attorney General, and it should be taken up with him. Card and Gonzales don't even acknowledge Comey's presence in the room.

The White House continues with the plan, illegally, without the required signatures from DOJ.

Only after Ashcroft, Comey, and Mueller threaten to resign en masse, does the White House back down and take legal steps to continue the program.

And who is now the Attorney General? The same guy who tried to pull a fast one, and who then chose not to obey the law when the fast one didn't work.

By the way, beyond the politics and lawlessness of it all, it also serves to demonstrate that the show 24 isn't all that unrealistic when it comes to how it portrays Washington.

Great post on the controversy from Glenn Greenwald below (sorry, it's a Salon link, requires watching an ad before reading).

Comey's Testimony Raises New and Vital Questions...

Dancing with the Stars endgame

I skimmed through last night's Dancing with the Stars and really hope Ian is the next to go. Elvis impressions aside, he just hasn't impressed me that much, and he had the head-start of having Cheryl as his partner. Then I hope Joey goes, mainly because I've been really impressed with Laila and Apolo. If it really comes down to Laila and Apolo... well, I'd be happy with either winning, but I'd lean toward Laila just because a woman hasn't won since Season 1 (right? Not sure, I only started watching last year, but that was the whole kerfuffle about whats-her-name Kelly Monaco winning over George Hamilton John O'Hurley).

Reminder post on bootable USB flash drive

Note to self: try this sometime. It'd be cool to take one of my USB flash drives and set it up to boot a machine with Ubuntu 7.04. Worth a try, anyway.

How To Install Ubuntu Linux on USB Pen Drive

What's the big deal about The Number?

And I don't mean stupid old Lost's digits, I mean the 16-digit hexadecimal number that decrypts most HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs out there, posts of which effectively shut down Digg a couple of days ago.

Here's an interesting post by Ed Felten about why people are so mad about it. When you put it the way Felten puts it, it's a great point: the AACS and the DMCA has basically made a number illegal. That really shouldn't be.

Why the 09ers Are So Upset

The Tienanmen Square revolt on Digg over HD-DVD

It really is astounding to see what is happening over at Digg. From what I gather, the AACS (the folks who invented the access control encryption present on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) sent takedown notices to websites, including Digg, that had any postings that listed a magic 16-digit hexadecimal number, which when used with the appropriate program can decrypt any high-def disc that's on the market today.

Of course, that caused people to just do things like come up with screensavers or songs that repeated the number over and over again. And people posted the number in their replies to various Digg posts. The more Digg took them down, the more people posted them... in base 10 format, in HTML hex colors, in music videos, in slide shows...

Easily right now, the top posts on Digg are all dealing with this number. It's amazing.

Now, of course, if I posted the number, I could be shut down too. So I wouldn't dream of doing that. Instead, I'll point you to a quiz you can take, to see if you know things like the formula of molecular hydrogen, or Yao Ming's jersey number. The answers are quite informative.

Take the quiz!

Something my son said

He was looking for a particular stuffed animal, and he said "you know Dad, when a kid is looking through his basket of stuffed animals, he sure goes through a LOT of memories."

Very true, my boy, very true.

Feisty Fawn Foul-Ups

Well, overall, the upgrade to Ubuntu 7.04 went OK. Problems so far:

* the hrxcode script I found for transcoding HD recordings to smaller Divx files no longer works. Not sure why. Wrote to the author with no reply. Will have to investigate... luckily it still works on my MythTV backend.

* There were some strange delays when ssh-ing over to some of my other computers, and bad delays when scp-ing. Found this post which solved the problem. Whew.

* Firefox crashes on me more, particularly when watching video.

* On the printing front, finally! Success! Instead of banging my head against the Samsung unified printer driver, someone pointed me to foo2qpdl (nice catchy name NOT) and this page which described exactly how to set it up. Worked great.

Edgy to Feisty

Ubuntu 7.04, goofily codenamed Feisty Fawn, has just been released... I decided to post a link to a guide on how to (easily) upgrade the 6.10 Edgy Eft version to the latest and greatest. Not sure of all the advantages but there's a new thing called Ubuntu Studio that will run under Feisty that looks intriguing IF it works. Which reminds me, I still can't get my new Samsung laser printer to work via Ubuntu. Who knows, maybe Feisty will fix that. Yeah, right.

Upgrading Edgy to Feisty

VA Tech shooter -- round up the usual suspect

Namely, videogames. It's a horrible tragedy, and people naturally want to grasp for answers to how someone could do something so monstrous. And, of course, the easiest thing to blame is videogames. Again, I can't believe I'm agreeing with Rush Limbaugh, but he points out that there are any number of things that could have caused this guy to go insane, and videogames are only one aspect. And Rush points out that millions of people play videogames, and millions have guns, but not everyone kills multiple people. Of course, if the guy didn't have the guns, I doubt he'd have been able to kill as many people with his CD of Counterstrike.

Kotaku: Rush Limbaugh

Vegas and NAB

Well, Vegas was much less kind to me this trip than it was a week ago. I didn't lose big but I certainly lost. In a strange twist of fate my mom was actually in Las Vegas at the same time I was, along with two of her friends and my godmother! Small world. I got a chance to hang out with them a bit and talk. My mom was doing much better than I was slots-wise

As for NAB, it was the usual gigantic zoo experience. I watched many of Apple's demos of the various parts of their new Final Cut Studio 2; was very impressed with the new versions of Motion and Soundtrack Pro. It will also be nice to do watermarking in Compressor and to have multiprocessor support, albeit kinda kludgey.

I was not willing to wait in line to see the Red camera, but I did see Peter Jackson's footage in action at the Apple booth.

Adobe's new suite looks very nice, and they're definitely integrating Flash and Flash Video into every part of it, which has some good advantages.

It's hard to decide what kind of HD camera to get at work. As one might say at an ice cream store, they all look so good, how can you pick? (I've already made my pick at home and sadly that was about a month too early... Canon upgraded the HV10 I bought and gave it HDMI out and a different form factor. Oh well.)

I got to see three famous people: Garrett Miller, inventor of the Steadicam, Bob Heil, inventor of many different microphones and loudspeakers, and Sinbad. OK, two famous people.

Right now I'm just chillin' at the Las Vegas Airport... 3 hours until my flight departs. I will likely get no sleep on the plane as usual, but I'll give it a go.

TV recap rundown random thoughts thing post

Ugh, haven't posted in a while, work's kept me pinned down. But I thought I would mention a few items on the TV front. Not really sure why, maybe it's because I had a lot of TV catching-up to do after being gone for a week on vacation.

* I'm really liking 24 this season. Lots of good twists and last-instant turns. It worried me for a while to hear that the producer of the show might really buy into some of the right-wing fantasies of the show (e.g. torture is always reliable, so what if freedoms are being infringed, etc.), but in general they do seem to not make the show be too harsh in either direction. I hate to agree with Rush Limbaugh of all people, but hey, it's just a show.

* How is it that Paulina Porizkova and Leeza Gibbons have been booted from Dancing with the Stars, yet Clyde Drexler and John Ratzenberger are still on? I mean, I disliked the Miss USA chick that got booted, but still, she was better than those two guys in a heartbeat.

* In other Dancing thoughts, Cheryl Burke must NEVER wear hair extensions again. She looked silly. And Apolo's partner, Julianne Hough, is insanely cute. Oh oh, she's from Salt Lake City and has 10 siblings. Guess we know who's voting for Mitt Romney...

* I'm enjoying 30 Rock more and more. Yes, I think Tina Fey is cute, but the show is funny and current (I liked their recent Mitt Romney reference, wow, and here I am making two Romney references in the same post), and Alec Baldwin is hilarious in it.

* Lost is still dead to me. I'm still recording it but I haven't watched it in months. I read the synopses on ABC's website instead. Much more efficient.

Spring Break Day 1

What a day yesterday was. Got up at 6AM, got a cab at 7AM, not to the airport, but to the start of our annual spring 10 mile run. Ran it at a good clip, just under 8 minute miles. Yay me. Walked 2 more miles to our car which we parked as near as we could get the night before.

Drove home, got the kids (they had a sleepover at the neighbor's house), packed some more, got another taxi at noon, drove to the airport, got on the plane, flew 5 hrs to Vegas (thank you Nintendo), got a van, drove 2.5 hrs to St. George Utah, got our room, zonked at about 12:30AM Eastern time. Yipes, what a day.

And now, we're up. Still dark here. Gonna get some camping gear and food, then hit Zion this afternoon. I'll post pictures when possible.

One funny story for the trip to St. George. We had stopped in Vegas and gotten dinner, but didn't get anything to drink for the road. We'd started driving and the kids started saying they were thirsty. Makes sense, we're in the desert. Of course, we had no water in the car, and the nearest stop was 45 miles away in Mesquite. We kept hearing how thirsty they were, and we kept not getting to Mesquite. Anyhow, Anna had been drawing, and she said "Look at my drawings!" And what were they of? A raincloud. A tall glass of lemonade. A bottle of Dasani water. The ocean. Ha ha, very funny.

PS3 jumps to Folding@home teraflop lead

Holy cannoli, look at this. The Playstation 3 software to allow people to run Folding@Home on their PS3s is barely out to the public, and it's already kicking all other OSes ass at least as far as teraflops is concerned. Pretty amazing.

Folding@Home OS stats

PS3 feeding Folding

Another quick interesting pass-along; the Sony PS3 will be adding a Folding@Home client for those people who want to help a distributed computing effort to cure disease, while also running their PS3 24/7 with the concomitant energy drain and risk of overheating.

Sony Reveals Folding@Home PS3 Details

Bill Gates is snippy

Not sure why, of all the blog postings I've seen in the past week or two, I choose THIS one to pass along, but I just found it interesting that Gates is so... what? Touchy? Snippy? Devoid of humor?

AdAge asks Gates about Hodgman to ill effect

Little Big Planet

Two big Sony announcements yesterday at the Game Developer's Conference. One was something called PlayStation Home, and it looked moderately interesting--kind of Second Life meets Miis meets XBox achievements. It really does make Miis look pretty sickly in comparison, and even Second Life graphics.

But the thing that really freaked me out was Little Big Planet. Oh. My. God. It's hilarious that a dopey little puzzle game with little rag doll puppet things running around makes me want to get a $600 PS3. Resistance sure didn't and flOw doesn't, but this does. Man, I just realized something... would it be cool to see a next-gen Katamari Damacy with that level of detail and physics modeling!

Anyhow, here's a link to the Kotaku link to the video. I've subscribed to GameSpot finally and downloaded the high-def clip and man does it look great, but this will give you an idea.

Kotaku post on Little Big Planet.

Yep, Lost has lost it for me

Here's how little I cared about Lost: when I fired up my MythTV DVR to watch something while on the treadmill, over the last week I chose multiple episodes of The Daily Show, Iron Chef America, and even blinkin' Yu-Gi-Oh G/X, than watch Lost.

Today, I was out of other stuff to watch, so I decided to watch last week's episode ("Tricia Tanaka is Dead" or whatever it was). Once the meteor hit the restaurant, I stopped it and deleted it on the spot. Not only is Tricia Tanaka dead, so is Lost, at least to me.

360tan is kawaii

Saw this posted on Kotaku and thought it was pretty funny... I liked the little digs at the 360's weight and overheating issues. And the art is kawaii. And the comment about the shadows was hilarious. PS: happy birthday to me!

360-tan translated (from Kotaku)

Worst. Oscars. Ever?

I'm not sure it was as bad as Rob Lowe singing "Rollin on the River" with Snow White, but it was pretty close. Ellen DeGeneres was OK as host but just barely. (It almost seemed like Jerry Seinfeld was auditioning for the part when he was giving out the Best Documentary award.) I liked the opening Errol Morris thing, but only because I like Errol Morris and I like Apple (the piece was a copy of what Morris did for Apple's Mac commercials a while back). The other montages were eeeh. The Pilobilus (sp) shadow art thing was dumb. The speeches were boring. I mean, I love Ennio Morricone's work, but does he need to be up there for 3-4 minutes? (I think that's how long he was up there from my clicking through his speech at 30 seconds a hop.) Similarly, the Dreamgirls medley went on FOREVER! Jeez, get the hook already! They didn't even win Best Song, and they had three out of the five nominations! Ugh!

Every year I vow not to watch, and every year I break my vow. At least this year I watched most of it via MythTV and played Viva Pinata instead.

ESR is down with Edgy!

Interesting post to only the hardcore Linux people out there... seems that Eric S Raymond has given up on Red Hat/Fedora and has switched to Ubuntu. I would have thought some of Ubuntu's recent statements concerning non-open-source video drivers would have made ESR hesitant, but apparently Ubuntu works and Fedora doesn't so that was enough for him.

ESR gives up on Fedora

Ooooh, Dancing with the Stars new lineup!

I probably have Dancing with the Stars posts elsewhere here. This is somewhat embarassing, but oh well. They've just announced this year's contestants and the lineup is as varied as you might expect. Interestingly, Heather Mills is in it: I thought she'd be tied up divorcing Paul McCartney, or at least roundly despised because of it. Then again, she'll be the first paraplegic contestant. I'd say one of the odds-on favorites will have to be Ian Ziering, only because Cheryl Burke will be his partner. And I'll be watching for Ric Ocasek in the audience cheering on his hot wife Paulina Porizkova (they are still married, aren't they?).

Oncoming Oscars

Hm, haven't posted in a while and I'm not really sure what to discuss, so I'll discuss this Sunday's Oscars. Don't worry, this will be brief. Mainly because of the movies up for Best Picture, I think I've only seen two (Little Miss Sunshine and The Departed).

I'm adding Babel to my NetFlix queue right after I post this... Maria saw The Queen while I chose to play Gears of War for two hours instead, and I do want to see both the nominated Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of our Fathers.

I was wishing that Children of Men had done better, as I quite liked the film. Some great technical work in that film. But I, like everyone, will be rooting for Scorsese to finally win a bleeping Oscar, either as Best Director or as Best Picture or both.

Oh, and I guess I hope Cars wins Best Animated Picture. I don't think I put it in my database yet, but both Maria and I DETESTED Happy Feet (I mean we hated that sucker)... can't comment on Monster House... that'd be like the old Bill Murray SNL routine "I didn't see this, so it's out of the running."

Bourdain disses Food Network

Found this with a lowly 12 Diggs but it was pure gold for someone like me who watches Food Network from time to time. Noted chef and author and gadfly Anthony Bourdain goes down the list of Food Network celebs and pulls no punches. Likes: Batali, Giada, Alton. Dislikes: pretty much everyone else. It's always refreshing to see someone speaking candidly like this, and boy is he candid.

Guest Blogging: A Bourdain Throwdown

The huge pinata timesink

The kids got Viva Pinata for Christmas this year. Yeah, the kids. Uh huh. All for them. What a selfless guy I am.

Anyhow, they enjoy the game and have even started watching the series a bit. I enjoy the game too. A little too much.

I'm not addicted to it or anything. I'ts not quite that bad. However, unlike Gears of War (where I can play through a couple of checkpoints and put it away) or UNO (where I can yet again lose an online match and put it away), once I start playing The Pinata, I go into some kind of zone, and before you know it, boom, an hour of my life is gone.

The other day I thought, OK, I'm just going to quickly go in and see what pinatas I need to breed in order to get some more awards. I saw that I needed another shellybean or two. Well, that'll be quick, right? Off to romance them. But wait... the fruit by those bushes is rotting. I should pick it up or sell them off. And that bush doesn't look so hot... I'll buy another seed and plant another one. Hey, my candaries have hearts over their heads! I can finally romance them. Wait, hold still you stupid yellow virtual pinata bird things! Oh, flutterscotches are ready too, but they are also stupid and keep flying around. Ack, Dastardos! Where's my crowla? What? He got broken? Ack!

I could go on like that for hours. And unfortunately, I do. In real life as opposed to a blog.

Steve Jobs -- anti DRM?

Wow, just read an article on Yahoo News saying that The Steve has come out in favor of the music companies selling unencumbered un-DRMed music. Interesting in that it's recently been rumored that the record companies themselves have been considering getting rid of DRM, if only to free them from Steve's iTunes Music Store. Steve seems to be OK with that, at least on paper.

Now, the question is, what's so special about music? Wonder if Steve is also OK with selling, say, Cars or Toy Story online with no DRM attached...

Apple's Jobs Calls on Music Industry to Drop DRM

Cat 5 choker

Saw this mentioned on Geek Brief TV and had to blog it to remember it. I'm not sure the Mrs. would necessarily like a choker made out of Cat 5 unshielded twisted pair cable, but I thought it was cute, as were the resistor-based earrings or the MIDI wrist band.

Fractalspin

Aqua Teen Hunger Scare

Saw this posted first on Daily Kos and I agree 100%... when it comes to baseball, give me the Red Sox over the Yankees any day, but after the insane overreaction to a bunch of Lite-Brites giving people the finger, you have to hand it to NYC over Boston. People demanding that Turner compensate Boston? Charging the two guerilla artists with a felony? Jeez, people really have gone nuts in this country.


NY Daily News: NY Tooned Out Invaders

Great breakthroughs in science

I haven't posted anything here recently, and there's plenty to discuss and lots of things that seem blogworthy, but man, nothing could have stopped me from passing along the fantastic news that researchers have come up with a way to create a caffeinated donut.

Hold the Coffee! Caffeinated Donuts and Bagels Could Provide That Morning Buzz!

iPhone not so widescreen

As usual, I was right there during the Steve Jobs keynote, letting his patented Reality Distortion Field warp my sensibilities. For a while I thought, hey, $600 for a 8 GB iPod with a phone in it isn't a bad deal at all.

Since then, however, a number of things have taken the gloss off Steve's new pet project. Things like Apple-only applications running on the phone (i.e. no cool third-party apps or hacks), no buying songs and putting them right on the iPhone, and even the possibility that you won't be able to use your own purchased songs as a ringtone (gotta protect Cingular-AT&T's ringtone revenues, of course).

But now this news from Engadget that the iPhone "widescreen" aspect ratio isn't really 16:9 widescreen, but is some funny ratio inbetween 4:3 and 16:9. Of course with a blog called Aspect Ratio, I would be remiss if I did not help spread this word far and wide. Well, you know, as far and wide as this thing goes, which is neither far nor wide. Anyhow, just read the link, OK?

The widescreen iPhone: not so widescreen

Apple Computer is gone

And in its place is simply Apple, Inc.

I guess Steve Jobs has finally achieved his goal of making a computer like a toaster. There are scaled-down computers in all of the non-computer devices his company sells, certainly, and even a version of OS X running on the wildly-talked-about new iPhone. But his point is a valid one: people don't care about the computer in the iPod or iPhone or Apple TV, they just care about the device itself--the toaster, if you will. So, de-emphasize the computer part of the company. Makes sense, I guess.

Nevertheless, it's too bad, since it was after all a Macworld Expo keynote he gave, and discussion of new eight-core Mac Pros, or new displays, or new iLife or iWork, or even the new version of OS X due soon, was entirely missing.

Instead, the vast majority of the keynote discussed the iPhone, which certainly looked nice while Steve spun his reality-distortion field. However, things are gradually coming out which are taking the blinding luster off the gizmo. Things like the apparent inability to sync the phone via Bluetooth, limitations of the Cingular carrier, but particularly the inability to run third-party apps on it, which is particularly disappointing since Steve made much of the iPhone running some subset of OS X.

Oh well, who am I kidding? AAPL is almost at $100 a share, people would give their left gonad for one, and I will probably want one too eventually.

Elvis Costello on SNL 19 years ago

I didn't have much to watch on the treadmill this morning, so I put in Rhino's DVD The Right Spectacle, which is a compilation of many of Elvis Costello's music videos, along with brief commentary from Declan himself. This reminded me of the famous appearance of Elvis Costello on Saturday Night Live lo these four thousand years ago, when he started off with one song, then abruptly stops and starts up "Radio Radio." Which reminded me to look for that clip on YouTube, which thankfully has it and hasn't been taken down yet by NBC.

Achievement ho

Here's an article I saw posted on Major Nelson's blog about how achievements have become very popular for players on the 360 and Xbox Live. I have to confess that I have fallen prey to them as well, so much so that I will do stupid things like start 100 timed games of Hexic, or make 10 worthless PGR3 courses, just to get a few more achievements and gamer points. Hey, I have limited gaming time, I have to get the points when I can and however I can. I guess that makes me an... well, you get the picture.

Microsoft's Achievement Points Yield 'Nerd Cred'

Ubuntu in NYC thanks to network-manager

Our family recently went to New York City for a brief vacation. We had reservations at a hotel that was inexpensive as NYC goes. Very inexpensive. Suspiciously inexpensive.

So I was hesitant to bring the MacBook Pro up with me just to get it ripped off. What to do, what to do? Ubuntu to the rescue, of course!

I charged up my 6-year-old iBook, installed Ubuntu 6.10 PPC version on it, and the machine was off and running... well, make that strolling. Firefox is a hog and the iBook is no speed demon.

The biggest problem, as always, was getting wireless networking to work. With the standard install I could get on unprotected networks, but connecting to my WPA-encrypted network at home was a non-starter. Plus, there seemed to be nothing that allowed you to scan for and connect to new wireless networks like any other OS provides.

Did some Googling around and viola, came across network-manager:

http://www.gnome.org/projects/NetworkManager/

I installed it and the gnome frontend, rebooted, and... it didn't work. Googled some more. Turns out you have to edit /etc/network/interfaces to remove or comment out any network interfaces other than loopback. I of course didn't bookmark the page that discusses this, but it basically said "your file should look like this" so I made my file look like that.

(Here's a blog entry that has a good discussion about it...)

They said a logout/login should get things working. I did, but it didn't. So I rebooted and... YES! network-manager was up there in the menu bar in all its glory, working, letting me connect to unprotected AND WPA networks with no problems, listing all the SSIDs it could see.

Got to our NYC hotel, and although it was by no means the Ritz, it wasn't vermin-infested, and to my surprise... wireless internet access in the hotel! I was able to use my iBook and keep up to date on the world while in the room. Now all I have to do is fix the iBook's Y key...

Superballs over San Francisco

I can just imagine this director's pitch to Sony for doing a commercial for their BRAVIA line of TVs... "Why don't we take a quarter-million superballs and let them go on a San Francisco street and film it?" Damn, this commercial is awesome. Just the coordination for filming from the various angles is impressive, let alone the visuals that result. The soundtrack is perfect too.

I saw this posted on digg originally, and the embedded video above is at least the right aspect ratio. The link below is to the Sony BRAVIA site, which has the extended version. It's larger but MUCH better quality version. You really need to see the HD version of this commercial to appreciate it fully.

Bouncy Balls: The BRAVIA advert

Stay on the scene, JB

I know this post is no longer timely, but I did have to note the passing of the Godfather of Soul, the hardest working man in show business, Mr. James Brown. I think I posted somewhere a while back about The CD of JB, which is a quick way of getting up to speed with his music other than the usual songs from the Good Morning Vietnam soundtrack. Heck, I remember listening to "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)" on KPRS in Kansas City way back in the day, and one of my sisters had a "Live at the Apollo" album I used to listen to all the time. He was an incredible musician and bandleader. He will truly be missed.