Robbio's Blog

A Brief Update

2008-11-06T17:22:00.002Z

It's been a while since I've been able to blog. Suddenly my life has gotten much busier and I've found that I don't have anywhere near the same amount of time as I used to have in order to blog. Not sure how much longer I'll continue to blog, but I just wanted to let you know that I am still alive and haven't completely abandoned this. Thanks for continuing to sticking with me.

10 Simple Rules

2008-09-21T11:49:00.001Z

I'm not too bad when it comes to making friendships with women. So I thought I'd share 10 rules for men to follow when wanting to be friends with members of the fairer sex.

1. When speaking to women look only at their eyes, not elsewhere on their bodies, no matter how much talent they may have elsewhere. This makes it clear to them that you are interested in them, not their bodies.

2. Compliment their shoes. Women like shoes and they like that men notice them. Men don't understand shoes outside of a primal need to protect their feet, but this doesn't mean that you can't think of something nice to say about a woman's shoes.

3. Ask questions about them and listen. Women like to talk and given the opportunity, they will do so. Be patient and give her lots of time. And make sure you are listening attentively. This will require you to keep your arms at your side and to lean in toward the woman while she is speaking.

4. Remember what she says. You don't have to remember every little detail, but if you can remember some of it (and if you've paid attention to rule 3, you'll have plenty to choose from), women appreciate it. Slip in little things into future conversations. Even if a woman doesn't comment on it, she will definitely notice it.

5. Be vulnerable. Disclose something that is close and personal about you. It gives the woman the feeling that you trust her. It also gives her something to sympathise about for you. Women like to sympathise, as they are more in touch with their emotions than men are.

6. Don't be ambiguous. Women like to read things into statements. Don't give them the opportunity to do so. Be transparent and don't choose actions or words that can be taken the wrong way. Make your message clear. In this way, it avoids the woman wondering if you're playing games with her.

7. Appreciate women for who they are. Women like to be individuals. They also like to be affirmed in their own self worth. Let them know how much you appreciate them for who they are, and not what they can do for you or how they make you feel.

8. Talk emotions, not facts. Women like to talk about feelings. In this way, they can get inside and try to understand what makes you tick. As previously mentioned, women are more in tune with their emotions, and therefore like to explore and discuss them more often than men do. Facts bore women.

9. Don't expect women to forget things. Women have extremely good memories, often for what appears to be insignificant things. She will be able to remember ten years later what the colour of your socks were when you first met her. Don't be surprised by this. Instead, show that you appreciate her ability to remember the little details. After all, it is the little things in life that make it worth living.

10. Be patient. Sometimes women can act irrationally (and so can men). If you feel that a woman is acting irrational, do not ever tell the woman that you are thinking this. Instead, let the woman vent. Whatever it is that is bothering the woman will eventually pass. If you try to reason with a woman while she is in this state, it will only end in tears.

I'm certain there are more rules. And at some point I'll write some of my tips for women who want to be friends with men.

Brokedown Palace

2008-09-18T19:49:00.003Z

'Brokedown Palace', made almost ten years ago, stars Claire Danes and Kate Beckensale as teenagers who go on holiday to Thailand during their summer between high school and college. While in Thailand, they meet a mysterious stranger who invites them to Hong Kong for the weekend. En route to Hong Kong, the two girls get arrested by the local police and are found to be in possession of about four kilos of heroin. They are found guilty of drug smuggling and are both sentenced to 33 years in jail, in a place sarcastically referred to by its inmates as 'Brokedown Palace'.

They then employ the services of an ex-pat American lawyer known as 'Yankee Hank' (played by the ever under-appreciated Bill Pullman), who does his best to try to free them from prison.

With a storyline that sounds like it should be gripping and a very capable cast of actors, why is this film often found in the bargain bins at the local supermarket instead of gearing up for a special edition 10th anniversary release on DVD?

First off, the directing (provided by Jonathan Kaplan) is weak. There are moments where, under a more capable director, there could have been real suspense that would have engaged the audience. Secondly, the storyline is weak, which is saying something considering the plot. There's no real sense of purpose and it meanders without really going anywhere. Finally, the characters are unengaging, which again is incredible to believe given the cast. This actually is more a reflection of the screenplay and directing than it is on the actors. We all know that Claire Danes is a very capable actress and given more freedom, she could have made something of her role here. Unfortunately, her acting is stifled due to the many shortcomings of the director.

Brokedown Palace did have good cinematography and initially is very beautiful to look at. It shows so much promise at the beginning which is why it's all the more of a disappointment when it fails to live up to its potential. In short, we at FilmQuest can't really recommend watching this film and give it a meagre 3 out of 10 QuestMarks.

Table for 4

2008-09-11T21:07:00.001Z

As the only horror film to date that Jeon Ji Hyun has done, the Uninvited is a rather forgettable film. While Jeon Ji Hyun looks as beautiful as ever in it and her acting is top notch, the storyline is weak and the lead male, played by Park Shin Yang, is unengaging.

Park plays an interior designer by the name of Jung Won, who is coming home one night on the underground. Right before he gets off, he sees two girls sleeping on it. He tries to wake them up, but is unsuccessful at it. He then hears on the radio the next day about two girls that were killed the previous night on the underground. Lo and behold, he sees these two girls shortly thereafter at his dinner table, which was just given to him as a gift from his fiancee.

Jung Won is working on renovating a psychiatrist's office when he bumps into a girl named Yun (played by Jeon Ji Hyun). Through a series of events, she ends up at his apartment and is able to see the two dead girls. Yun has a history herself though, hence the reason why she's going to see a psychiatrist.

As far as stories go, this one isn't anything special. In fact, as far as horror films go, while the storyline is rather convoluted, it is extremely tame. The cinematography is unusually flat and unspectacular. In fact, the one redeeming quality of this entire film is the performance put in by Jeon Ji Hyun. We at FilmQuest give this film 4 QuestMarks out of 10, which is unusually low for a film with Jeon Ji Hyun in it.

Searching for the Next Engine

2008-09-09T20:05:00.001Z

Back in the days before the World Wide Web came along, there were a handful of search engines that helped you find the information you needed. Even in those nascent days of the Internet, the need for a search engine was apparent. Previously, you would just telnet into someone's server, and have a peek around their directory to see what they had. Of course, back in those days, there wasn't that much to be found on the Internet.

The first and biggest of these pre-web search engines was Archie in 1990. The staff members here at TechWatch had spent many of nights on Archie thinking it was the best thing since the creation of the Internet itself. Soon thereafter, Veronica and Jughead popped up (along with Gopher), all of which did nothing but find the information you were looking for.

So it was no surprise that some of the names that first became big on the web were the early seach engines such as AltaVista and Excite. This was at a time when Jerry Yang and David Filo started their own directory of the web, eventually calling it Yahoo, and promising their users that they would never sell out and put advertising on their website. A whole slew of search engines/web directories were born during the heady days of the mid-1990's, most of which today are nothing but curious footnotes in the history of the Internet. In fact there were so many of these search engines, all working in different ways, that aggregator search engines sprung up. These sites would automatically do a search on a number of the biggest and best search engines and then bring all the results back. Of these, the most notable was mamma.com ("the mother of all search engines"). Of this first batch of search engines, Yahoo quickly rose to the top of the list and dominated the field. It seemed like their reign would last a good long while.

And then Google came along in 1997 and changed everything. By this point, the search engines had morphed into 'web portals' and became hulking masses of confusion that were in the middle of an identity crisis. Google, with it's very simple layout and minimalist design (not to mention a superior search algorithm), slowly but surely started rising to the top of the search engines, all the while refusing to call themselves a search engine company (even though that was the only thing they did in those days).

And now, just over a decade later, Google is still king of the search engine. But is it time to start speculating if their reign is coming to an end? With new contenders such as Cuil (pronounced 'cool') and SearchMe (both of these engines look like the anti-Google with their black screens) trying to get into the game and older players like Microsoft and Yahoo trying to catch up, will it be long before a new champion is declared? Having used all of the aforementioned search engines for a while now, we feel that none of them are up to the challenge yet of being crowned the new king. Therefore we think that Google still has some breathing space yet in which to keep ahead of its competitors.

The Spitfire Grill

2008-09-04T20:21:00.003Z

Percy Talbot is a girl who's trying to escape her past by moving to a town that offers her a future. She is a young girl who has just finished serving time in prison and manages to find a job helping a crotchety old lady (Hannah Ferguson, played by Ellen Burstyn) run a well-loved diner (called 'The Spitfire Grill') in a sleepy community. While there, her fresh perspective manages to not only shake things up in a town that loves not having surprises, but it also endears her to most of the community's townsfolk.

As the storyline develops, we learn more about Percy and her past. We also learn about Hannah and a secret that she's been carrying around for years. It is an engaging story that has very fleshed out characters. Alison Elliott turns in a superb performance in the lead role of Percy. This is a feel-good film that runs deeper than most. It is no wonder that this 1996 production was turned into off-Broadway musical a mere five years later.

One of the weaknesses of this film is that the story runs a bit slow at times, but we at FilmQuest wonder if that was to let the audience absorb the full impact of the story. And amidst the four major characters in the film, there are a number of two-dimensional people which detract some from the richness of the story. Despite these nuisances, we would still recommend this film for viewing on a cold winter's night, when you're curled up in front of a fire with your loved ones. It was a close call, but in the end we had to give this film just 6 QuestMarks out of a possible 10, despite wanting to give it a higher rating. This is mainly due to the fact that although we loved the film, there were a number of shortcomings that detracted from the overall enjoyment of it.

Open Computers

2008-09-02T21:38:00.001Z

We at TechWatch have been finding the current tussle between Apple and Psystar to be very interesting. For those of you who haven't been following, here's a brief recap. Psystar back in April of this year announced that they were going to sell computer configurations that were capable of running unmodified versions of Mac OS X.5. Had they only sold the hardware, they might have gotten away with it. But they also offered to sell retail copies of Mac OS X.5 and preinstall it for you. This is clearly against the End User License Agreement (EULA) of Mac OS X, which spells out that it can only be installed on genuine Apple hardware.

So Apple did what they thought they needed to do in order to protect their intellectual property (IP) and sued Psystar on the ides of July this year for eight counts of copyright infringement. This came as a shock to absolutely no one in the IT world. In fact, we at TechWatch wondered why it took Apple three full months to do so. Apple, in asking for a full recall of all of the computers sold by Psystar with their operating system on it, was going for the jugular.

Psystar this week has decided to not roll over and play dead. Instead, they've decided to go and countersue Apple claiming they (Apple) have violated the antitrust act and had monopolistic behaviours. The resolution of this conflict could set a precedence for years to come. If Apple is successful, then that paves the way for IT companies to build exclusionary products that all but guarantees a market segment will be locked into buying their products. If Psystar is successful, however, then it means that no matter what you try to innovate, someone else could come along and steal your work and sell it for less through channels that you don't control.

We haven't seen a lawsuit with so much riding on it since Darl McBride of SCO sued IBM for a billion dollars back in March of 2003 for allegedly incorporating Unix code into Linux. We anxiously await to see what the next steps will be between Apple and Psystar.

Wall-E

2008-08-31T16:29:00.007Z

It's finally time for us to get around to do a review of the latest film by Pixar Animation Studios, Wall-E. Having read a very long article over at the Harvard Business Review written by the President of Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios, Ed Catmull, on how Pixar fosters creativity, we had a better idea of where Pixar was coming from with their latest foray into feature-length animated films. In short they're not afraid to take wacky ideas and play around with them.

The premise behind Pixar's ninth film, and the second released since they were bought by Disney in January of 2006, is that a lowly robot, the eponymous Wall-E, is tasked with cleaning up a post-apocalyptic Earth. He then meets and falls in love with another robot, Eve. Before we even screened the film, we had serious concerns about how Pixar could take this concept and make it work when there clearly couldn't be much in the way of dialogue. While the trailer showed humourous sight gags of Wall-E and Eve, we doubted that these could carry a whole film for an hour and a half.

Having actually seen the film, we were right in having been concerned about the lack of dialogue. The first half hour, while entertaining, was a bit on the slow side. Things picked up a little once they made it into space, however. The lack of a clear villain in this film meant that there was very little in the way of dramatic tension. Also, we strongly dislike it when a film tries to moralise to us, which we felt this one tried to do.

Being Pixar gave birth to the now very-prolific artform of feature-length computer animated films, we had expected them to lead the field in this area. With Wall-E, we weren't disappointed. There's a reason why their first eight films grossed an average of $240 million at the American box office ($540 million internationally) and Wall-E is tracking to hit just under this level. Wall-E (the film) is beautifully rendered and at times it's easy to forget that this was all done with computer animation. When Toy Story came out in 1995, they had apologised for the lack of realistic looking humans in it. The animation in Wall-E shows just how far Pixar has come in the past thirteen years, and how much the other studios still need to go to catch up.

In conclusion, Wall-E is a very solid film produced by a studio that has had nothing but solid hits. While the story is slow at points and could have easily been told in a half hour, the stunning visuals and sight gags help fill in the weaknesses of this film. We at FilmQuest give this film a very positive 7 out of 10 QuestMarks.

With Pixar's next five films being Up (2009), Toy Story 3 (2010), Newt (2011), The Bear and the Bow (2011) and Cars 2 (2012), it looks like they have a rather full slate of films ahead of them. We can only hope that they don't become a victim of their own success and that the quality of their films remains high. We also hope that they don't get too wacky with their storylines (which they were in danger of doing with their last two films) and alienate their audiences. Pixar does like to gamble, but can even their Midas touch last much longer? Only time will tell.

Privacy On, Record Nothing

2008-08-27T21:24:00.003Z

The second beta of Internet Explorer 8 was released today. It's heartening to see that Microsoft has finally decided to try to play catch-up with the other major browsers as far as privacy goes. They have introduced a new surfing mode, one which erases all your cookies, visited websites and form data as you surf. This allows a person to surf the web without the fear of it being recorded and then discovered later.

Microsoft says that this would most likely appeal to spouses who want to buy each other gifts online without the fear of the surprise being spoiled. This could be a real reason why one would need such privacy, but there could be other reasons why one would not want others to know their surfing habits. While Microsoft calls this new surfing mode 'InPrivate Browsing', we at TechWatch have dubbed it the 'Privacy On, Record Nothing' (PORN) mode.

Regardless though the reasons why one would need to surf the web without leaving a trace, we do applaud Microsoft for finally trying to do something about implementing a feature that has been widely available in their competitors' products for quite some time now.

Casshern

2008-08-14T21:06:00.009Z

As every molecular biologist knows, the holy grail in human genetics is being able to revert a cell back to totempotency,which is activating the latent ability of a cell to turn into any other kind of human cell possible. This ability is only found in the cells of embryos, but is lost after the third or fourth division (when the embryo consists of between eight and sixteen cells).

Casshern is a 2004 Japanese film where a doctor has discovered totempotency, though the term is never used in the film and instead he calls his discovery 'neo-cells'. The events of the film happen in the near future after there's been 50 years of war between Europa and the Eastern Federation. A new federation, called 'Eurasia' is formed after the Eastern Federation wins the war. However, the war has taken a terrible toll on the environment, what with the various weapons used over the years being of the nuclear, chemical and biological varieties.

The neo-cells are seen as a way of ensuring the survival of the human race. However, after a terrible accident in the lab (are there any non-terrible lab accidents in films?), fully-formed human creatures, calling themselves neo sapiens, emerge from the neo-cell vats. The humans present during the accident immediately try to destroy the neo sapiens, but fail to do so. The neo sapiens thus are understandably bitter towards their human counterparts and eventually send out an android army to destroy them.

Amidst all this, the biologist's son is killed in the war. The biologist resurrects his son by soaking his son's body in the neo-cell vat. The son is reborn, but with super powers and becomes known as Casshern, after the name of a local deity.

The film is an interesting remake of the 1973 anime upon which it is based. The acting is extremely well done considering it was all done in front of green screens. The look and feel of the film is gorgeous if rather surreal, which is done to great effect. The soundtrack adds emphasis to the story and contributes greatly to the epic feel of this film. Where the film really lets the viewer down, however, is in the disjointed storytelling. We found the plot to be difficult to follow and greatly stretched our ability to suspend disbelief.

We at FilmQuest really wanted to like this film, but in the end after much debate we agreed to give it four out of ten QuestMarks. We recommend seeing this film only if you have no expectations of enjoying it and if you are prepared to spend the evening camped on the rewind button going back to try to figure out what's been going on.

Why DRM Is Evil

2008-08-12T19:16:00.004Z

We at TechWatch have never been fans of Digital Rights Management (DRM). This is one of the reasons why we cheered for Diamond when they released their Rio PMP300, the second mp3 player in the North American market (the first was Eiger Labs MPMan F10). With 32 mbs of memory, it could hold about 12 songs and could run 10-12 hours off of a single AA battery. What differentiated the mp3 format from other would be usurpers of the CD market is that there were no propriety methods that prevented music to be copied from one device to another (i.e. DRM).

We weren't the only ones to notice this. In the 10 years since the first mp3 player was released, the mp3 format has become wildly popular, enjoying a massive growth in the early millennium, thanks to Napster. The record companies were resistant to digital distribution of their music, instead trying to force consumers to be tied to the CD. To this end, instead of developing new revenue streams through legitimate online distribution channels, they sought to stop the illegal ones they found on the Internet.

It wasn't until Apple released their first iPod, on 23 October, 2001, and opened up the iTunes music store a year and a half later (28 April, 2003) that the music companies saw that there really was a market for digital downloads of their music. But even the iPod and iTunes had one over-arching weakness, the FairPlay system (Apple's DRM). To be fair to Apple, they wanted to release the music without DRM, but the music studios would have never done business with them had that been the case.

Once everyone had their eyes opened, they tried to figure out how to make a working business model out of selling music online. The problem was that all of their attempts failed due to the insistence of DRM. It was the customers who got burned when these business ventures fail. Microsoft is shuttering it's music store at the end of this month, but promises to keep their DRM servers (without which the purchased music would become unplayable) running for an indefinite period of time. Worse yet, Yahoo is shuttering their DRM servers at the end of this month, leaving all their customers with loads of files that are no longer good. Sure, Yahoo is offering people coupons to get their music in mp3 format (without DRM) from their partner RealNetworks. But surely, this is a hassle to get something that they should have gotten from the very beginning.

And let's not even start on the whole Sony escapade that introduced the term 'rootkit' into every music lover's vocabulary. This is why we applauded Amazon when they were able to cut deals with the four major music studios (Universal and EMI in September 2007, Warner Bros in December 2007 and Sony BMG in January 2008) to sell unprotected mp3 files from their music store, the first ever time that this happened. Sure, this is only available in the United States, but this is due to change this year as Amazon rolls out their music store internationally.

All in all, we think music companies should start assuming that most of their customers are honest, instead of the other way around. What kind of business model succeeds where the basic assumption towards their customers is "we know you're going to try to steal from us at every possible opportunity, so we're going to severely limit what you can do with the products you buy from us."

We leave you with this. It's a video produced by Microsoft on what the original iPod packaging would look like if it was designed by Microsoft.

The Dark Knight Ascendancy

2008-08-07T20:25:00.014Z

Christian Bale has certainly come a long ways since 1992, when he did a solo performance of the song 'Santa Fe' in the film musical 'Newsies'. With such light-hearted fare as 'Swing Kids' and 'Little Women' following that up, it appeared that Bale was in danger of stereotyping himself. And then 'American Psycho' came along and it made people really take another hard look at him and see him for the versatile and heavy-hitting actor that he truly was.

On the 15th of June, 2005, Bale played the titular hero in 'Batman Begins'. Under Christopher Nolan's vision of Gotham, we finally had a film that was focussed on the hero, rather than the camp villains of yesteryear. It was the story about one man's journey to become the hero he was destined to become. It had an intelligent and entertaining storyline, one that was often lacking in other super hero films.

Expectations were high for the latest Batman outing, 'The Dark Knight'. But due to a number of reasons, the second Batman film under Nolan far exceeded anything the studios had imagined. It set a record for the largest opening weekend ($158.4 million), and became the first film this year to lead the American box office three weeks running. It only took 18 days for 'The Dark Knight' to reach the magical $400 million mark, a feat that took the next closest competitor ('Shrek 2' in 2004) 43 days to attain. And with weak films opening in the next couple of weeks, there's every chance that it'll continue to lead the box office. In fact, there's talk of it becoming the first film since 'Titanic' in 1997 to break the $600 million mark.

So is this film as good as everyone claims it to be? While Nolan's second Batman film isn't as precisely executed as his first film, it was still richly engaging. We have a new hero in Gotham in the form of Harvey Dent (played by Aaron Eckhart), the new District Attorney who will do whatever it takes to clean up Gotham. We have Bale becoming more of a brooding character who is thinking about giving up the whole Batman gig. To add fuel to the fire, Batman's previous love interest, Rachel Dawes, is in love with Dent. Oh, and have we mentioned that there's the Joker (played terrifyingly psychotically by the late Heath Ledger) as well.

This film runs the razor edge of comic book film pitfalls. While Heath Ledger steals many of the scenes and could be worthy of the posthumous Oscar people are tipping him to win, it is a danger to have a a comic book film focus too much on the villain. This was a lesson learned painfully through the first series of Batman films. And then there's the love triangle. Maggie Gyllenhaal does a fantastic job as Dawes, the part played by Katie Holmes previously. Gyllenhaal does something that Holmes was unable to do, and that is to make the character interesting, one that has depth. But there's a danger of making the love story too melodramatic, which was the eventual Achilles heel of the Spiderman trilogy. And then you have the stoic protagonist who has a crisis of conscience, a superhero cliché if ever there was one.

With all these potential traps to get mired in, Nolan does a fantastic job of navigating through them and around them. His sense of direction paid off extremely well (both figuratively and literally). What is evident in this film is that Nolan really cares about the Batman mythos. No wonder Nolan has agreed to do a third Batman film. Rumours have it that Johny Depp is the front runner to play the villain, the Riddler, in that one. We at the FilmQuest offices hope that Batman will finally be the one to break the curse of the comic book film trilogy, that being that the first two films will be spectacular while the third one will be a disappointment.

In conclusion, we give 'The Dark Knight' an exceptional 8 out of 10, which is rare for a film to achieve and even rarer for one based on a comic book. If you get the opportunity to see this one, by all means do so, even if it means having to sell a kidney.

The Rise of the Netbooks

2008-08-05T18:55:00.005Z

Back on the 16th of October, 2007, Asus released arguably the first mainstream netbook on the market, called the Eee 700. This first iteration had a 7" screen, 256 megs ram and a 2gb solid-state drive. Adding on a keyboard that was designed to be comfortable to use for a person no bigger than a 5-year-old and this netbook was more of a notbook. When we at TechWatch first heard about it, we (along with most of the computer industry) were very skeptical of it and saw no future for it. It's not often that we're wrong in our prognostications, but when we are, we freely admit it. And boy were we wrong about this one. It far exceeded everyone's expectations.

Flash forward a mere ten months (just over half of a Moore's law cycle) and the netbook market is becoming saturated with everyone jumping in on the bandwagon. Of the current batch, there are three notables to mention.

The first is the HP 2133 Mini-Note. This one is by far the best looking netbook on the market. A very solid chassis and a keyboard that is actually comfortable to use should combine to make a very good computing experience. Right? Wrong. HP in an apparent bid to save money decided to use the Via 1.2 Ghz processor, which runs as slow as molasses (treacle) in January. Couple this with trying to run Windows Vista, and you have an extremely frustratingly slow experience, making video watching reserved for only the truly masochistic. Add in a battery life of less than 2 hours with a BrightView screen that makes it all but impossible to use outdoors and you have a truly sorry excuse for a netbook. They say beauty is only skin deep, and this one proves the old addage like nothing we've seen before.

The second netbook on offer is the MSI Wind. With a 10" screen and a nearly-full-sized keyboard, this has certainly ticked some of the right boxes. While it does look nice in an Apple-gee-I'm-smug sort of way, the build quality seemed a bit subpar. It's equipped with an Intel Atom 1.6 Ghz processor, 1gb ram and an 80gb hard drive as standard. In our test machine, running Windows XP, we noticed no noticeable lag in performance, easily handling video playback like there was no tomorrow. The only thing that prevents us from whole-heartedly recommending this one is the 3-cell battery, which means there was a less-than-stellar battery life of just over two hours in our testing.

The final netbook is the Asus EEE 1000H. It has basically all the same specs as the MSI Wind. But what sets this apart from the Wind is the 6-cell battery, which meant our test machine was pushing seven hours before finally giving up the ghost. What's not to like about this machine, outside of the ugly logo on the cover? If you're wanting a netbook to buy right now, then this is the one for you.

However, if you're patient, the next few months will prove interesting as Dell releases their E (does this sound familiar) machine later this month and Lenovo releases their IdeaPad S10 in October. Both of these are blatant "me-too's" in a market segment that is full to overflowing. But what these two machines have which is missing in the current wave of netbooks (with the obvious exception of the Mini-Note) is the clout of a well-known company. And certainly the Dell E is very easy on the eyes, even if it's taken a step backwards as far as specs go in a netbook. The netbook market, while still in its infancy, is certainly growing up and the victors will be emerging shortly. Until then, it'll certainly be a fun and fascinating time to be on the sidelines.

Five Words

2008-08-02T14:26:00.000Z

I had a workmate who was going in for his annual review. As part of his preparation for this, he was tasked by his line manager to ask people to give him a list of five words that would describe him at work. Here was the list I came up with for him:

Informational
Dedicated
Innovative
Organised
Tenacious

He was really pleased with this list, until he discovered my sixth, hidden word. Oops.

In Memoriam

2008-07-26T08:45:00.007Z

If you could give one last talk to people knowing that it would be your last, what would you say? Randy Pausch, a lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University, had this opportunity. He was 47 and was dying of pancreatic cancer.

Here is his last lecture in its entirety (76 minutes). It is a moving talk on the importance of achieving dreams and helping others to achieve their dreams. He doesn't talk about his illness or his reflections on facing death, although he does admit to having a deathbed conversion experience (he bought a Mac computer).

Yesterday, he succumbed to his illness and died. May he rest in peace.

A Steaming Cup of Coffee

2008-07-20T14:38:00.001Z

A couple days ago, a man walks into a coffee shop and orders a triple espresso on ice. The barista (the equivalent of a wine's sommelier, but for coffee) politely informs the customer that they don't sell espresso on ice. The guy was somewhat taken aback by this. And then he decides to get clever about it. He orders a triple espresso and a glass of ice. The barista sells him the requested items. And then the guy, in front of the barista, is about to pour the triple espresso over the ice, when the barista says, "Hey man. What you’re about to do… that’s really, really Not Okay." But the guy proceeds to do it anyway.

Later, he blogs about it, further stating that the only way he'd return to the coffee shop is to burn it down. The owner of the coffee shop, responds to the blogger on their website threatening to punch him in his reproductive organ. The Washington Post gets wind of the story and writes about it, thus causing it to spread like wildfire. All this because of a little cup of coffee. Can we all say together, "perspective". But I guess if I have to weigh in on this matter, I would have to say that I'm on the side of the coffee shop.

Prince Caspian

2008-07-17T21:07:00.002Z

It was the late days of the 1980's when a guy by the name of George Lucas tried to buy the film rights to 'The Hobbit' in order to make a film of it. Being unable to do so, he instead made the film 'Willow', which was remarkably similar in storyline to the Hobbit. At the time, it was hailed by the Little People of America as a breakthrough for using the most amount of people who are differently-sized vertically. This film also put the actor Warwick Davis on the map.

Prince Caspian is the second film based off of the Chronicles of Narnia by Clive Staples Lewis. The storyline revolves around the four Pevensie children as they try to help Prince Caspian reclaim the throne that is rightfully his. The storyline strays quite far in certain places from the book, even adding in a whole other battle scene. This film no longer needs to establish the whole idea of Narnia or to introduce the characters, as that was all done in the first film. Because of this, it was unfettered and was able to focus more on action and storyline, which it does very ably. However, this comes at the price of characterisation, and the people in the film seem strangely two-dimensional still.

In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Weta Workshop was still cutting its teeth on special effects and costumes and creatures. In this film, one can see how much they've advanced since then, with the effects being much less uneven than in the aforementioned trilogy. However, we at FilmQuest still have issues with talking animals, and this still proves to be a sticking point for this film. There is just no good way to have animals talk in a believable manner.

At any rate, the film is still good and definitely enjoyable to watch, especially so since it has Warwick Davis in a very against-typecast role as the dwarf Nikabrik. We give this film a very solid 7 out of 10 stars.

Things Getting Ugly

2008-07-15T20:52:00.000Z

It's been a busy week in the world of TechWatch. First we bid adieu to a blogger, who at the age of 108, was the world's oldest. Second, Apple's iPhone 3G sold 1 million units in it's first weekend, a feat which took its predecessor 74 days to achieve. And in another blow to physical media, Netflix has announced that they will stream videos over the XBox 360.

But the real news is what's been happening with Yahoo and Microsoft. Wow, is this one getting ugly. Microsoft and Icahn made another attempt to buy Yahoo's search engine, only to be quickly rebuffed. Instead, Yahoo said they'd be willing to sell the company outright for $33 per share, the same exact figure that Microsoft had offered ten weeks ago and had been rejected as seriously undervaluing the company.

So what's changed in the past ten weeks? Well, the upcoming shareholder's meeting in just over two weeks for one, which sees the current board of directors as well as Jerry Yang in serious jeopardy of losing their jobs for botching the Microsoft negotiations months ago. We have said before that we seriously doubted that there'd be an independent Yahoo when 2008 is over, and we still stand by that.

The End of an Era

2008-07-13T20:44:00.001Z

I've had the same computer for the past 10 years (having shipped it over from the States when I moved here). I've often been very proud of that fact. Of course, everything inside of it has been updated almost on a yearly basis. In fact, the only things that were still from the original computer were the case and the floppy drive (even the power supply had been changed twice).

However, due to a number of reasons, not least of which was a workmate who chastised me and told me to loosen the purse strings a little, I've decided to capitulate and buy a new case. So after a decade of the same beige box that had become an old and familiar friend, I now have a new black and silver case with blue led's flashing from the front of it.

While it is nice to have front USB ports and a computer that doesn't look like it's bound for a museum, I sort of miss my old case. I guess I'm sort of sentimentally stupid that way.

The One to Watch

2008-07-08T21:21:00.006Z

The new iPhone 3G is being released this Friday, thus causing the websites who are carrying the iPhone to be swamped, most notably O2 and Carphone Warehouse. Apparently, demand is 10 times higher than the original iPhone and it is already sold out. We can certainly see why people would drool over this one. As we mentioned a couple months ago, it'll have GPS navigation, 3G access and of course a user interface that is second to none.

However, for those who are more tech savvy, as opposed to the great unwashed Apple supporters, our money is on the C905 by SonyEricsson. This one isn't due until early fourth quarter of this year, but it'll be well worth wait. So what makes this one so great? Well, it's a CyberShot camera, with 8.1 megapixels and a xenon flash (as opposed to the camera on the iPhone, which is seriously lacking). This camera will carry Sony's face-recognition software for taking great candids of people. It also has a GPS receiver (a SirfStar III chip), so not only can you get directions to your destination, but they've also managed to tie it to your camera so your photos can be geotagged. How cool is that? Also, it'll be SonyEricsson's first CyberShot mobile phone that will have WiFi built in, and we're betting that it won't take down WiFi routers like the iPhone did. This will be the one to watch, as it'll soon set a new standard in mobile phones being the centre of convergence of electronic gadgets.

Race to Witch Mountain

2008-07-03T21:04:00.004Z

When 'Escape to Witch Mountain' came out in 1975, it captured children's imaginations across the country. It was a simple, unassuming story of a brother and sister by the names of Tony and Tia (played by Ike Eisenmann and Kim Richards respectively) who are searching for their past. But these children aren't ordinary children. They have powers of telepathy and telekinesis, and thus become the objects of pursuit by an evil millionaire. It was a good, wholesome film, which you'd expect being it was made by Disney.

Three years later, Disney released a sequel, entitled 'Return from Witch Mountain'. This was more action oriented, but the storyline wasn't nearly as engaging nor as rewarding. Then in 1982, Disney released direct to TV a third film, entitled 'Beyond Witch Mountain'. This was aired only once in its first two decades of existence and was never released on home video. These days, it makes a very rare appearance on the Disney Channel. As such, it is extremely difficult to find anywhere. After many long years of searching, however, the staff at FilmQuest have finally managed to track down a copy of it and it's now on order and should reach our offices soon. Stay tuned for a full review of it shortly. It is notable for having both Tracey Gold and Kirk Cameron in it, both of whom would go on three years later to star together in the TV series 'Growing Pains'.

In March 2009, a remake of the original film is slated to be released. This will be called 'Race to Witch Mountain' and will star Alexander Ludwig and AnnaSophia Robb (from 'Bridge to Terebithia') as the siblings, Tony and Tia. It will also have the child actors from the original film in cameo roles as a police officer and a waitress. It should prove to be an interesting film as it's going to have an X-Files/Roswell feel to it. Remember, you read about it here first!

Boys Will Be Boys

2008-07-01T19:29:00.001Z

Well it's been a slow week in the world of technology. Yes, we bid farewell to both Bill Gates and Windows XP, eBay got a $61 million fine in a French court and a 16-year-old student used his blog and facebook to assemble the world's largest peace sign. But nothing too exciting. So we thought for this week's TechWatch, the staff would delve into the archives and give you a little history lesson.

In the summer of 1973, Alexander Sawchuk, an assistant professor at the USC Signal and Image Processing Institute (SIPI), and some colleagues were looking for an image to scan for a colleague's conference paper. They got bored of the regular stock photos and wanted something glossy and had a face in it. Almost as if on cue, in walks a guy with a recent Playboy magazine. They immediately took the centerfold, tore the top third of it off and wrapped it around the scanning drum.

This image soon became the most widely used image to test new compression and dithering algorithms. It is actually a very good image to use for such tests because there's a mixture between blurry and sharpness, it has a wide colour palette and it doesn't hurt that there's a beautiful woman in it.

Of course, all this goes to show that boys will be boys and even 25 years ago they managed to find a way to put porn into their computers. Below is the image that has appeared countless times in image textbooks over the past quarter century.

Compliments

2008-06-29T23:35:00.003Z

I guess I'm never going to get the whole idea of giving good compliments. Twice this past week I've failed miserably at giving them, and to the same person at that.

I was walking past a workmate's desk and noticed that she had a very old scientific calculator. I was impressed that it was so old and that she was still using it. I commented on the age of her calculator and she took it the wrong way, saying things like, "Whoever told you that saying that something is old is a compliment?" and "Why would I want to replace a calculator that is still working?" I really genuinely was trying to say a nice thing about the calculator but failed to do so, as only I can.

Later in the week, she was showing me pictures of a trip that she had taken to Europe last year. There was a picture that she was in. So I tried to compliment her by saying, "Wow, you look so much younger in that picture than you do now!" I figured if being old wasn't a compliment then surely saying that she was young looking must certainly be a good thing. But apparently I worded this one wrong as well. Oh well, live and learn.

Once in a Lifetime

2008-06-26T17:51:00.006Z

This week's film brings us to the heady days of the late 1980's with a made-for-TV film. But it's not just any film. It stars Christina Applegate (from 'Married with Children'), Tracey Gold (from 'Growing Pains') and Alyssa Milano (from 'Who's the Boss?'). They were the three reigning teen queens at the time. On top of this, you also had Alan Thicke and Kelsey Grammer. And don't look now, but is that a pre-Friends' Matthew Perry? A cast like this only comes along once in a lifetime and what a cast it was.

Dance 'til Dawn first aired in 1988 at a time when sitcoms ruled the airwaves and the cast in this film were the crème de la crème of the sitcom world. The plot is pretty basic. Hoover High School is having it's prom night. That's the whole plotline. Seriously. It's filled with so many clichès, you could pretty much take a ticksheet and mark them off as you come across them. There's the snobbish girl who gets her comeuppance, the nerdy boy who gets the popular girl, the bookworm wallflower who gets the popular guy, etc. The whole film plays out like an extended sitcom show, sans the laugh track. And that's a good thing.

But what makes this film so fun is that it doesn't take itself seriously at all. It makes no apologies for being what it is, and that is just to have a good time. This film won't change your life nor will it cause you to have any grand epiphanies, but then it's not trying to do that. It is just mindless entertainment, which it's very good at being. So we at FilmQuest are giving this film a rating of 6 out of 10, which is extremely high for this kind of film. And did we mention that spectacular cast?

The End of Communism

2008-06-24T21:06:00.003Z

Back in the late 1980's, a company called Aldus redefined desktop publishing (dtp) with their software package 'Pagemaker'. This was at a time when some companies had their entire business model built on designing and developing fonts. It was also a time when a little software company had been trying to release a new graphical interface for the burgeoning PC market. The first two versions of which had failed miserably.

The software company in question was Microsoft and the failed software was Windows. But during the development of their third incarnation of this new graphical interface, one of the people in Microsoft approached the head of the company, Bill Gates, and suggested that they include 11 fonts for free with Windows 3 in order to make the user experience more pleasant. Bill Gates immediately turned to the guy and said, "What are you, a communist?" This was one of Bill Gates' key phrases and every important person at Microsoft had at one time or another been accused of being a communist by him whenever they suggested something that is counter intuitive to the capitalistic business model.

Of course, Microsoft did give away free fonts with Windows 3 and jt became an instant success. This in turn led to the collapse of the entire font market almost overnight. And the rest as they say is history. Bill Gates has arguably changed the world in so many ways through the software developed at Microsoft. Next Monday, the 30th of June, will be his last day as an employee of the company that he helped cofound with his pal, Paul Allen. His guiding presence and business acumen will no doubt be sorely missed at Microsoft. And so this week's TechWatch bids a fond farewell to one of the most instrumental personalities in the computer world. We in the TechWatch offices consider it an honour and a privilege to have been witnesses to a personality the likes of which we'll probably never see again in our lifetimes.