Crippling My Computer

As I write this, my cable internet is dead for the second time in less than 2 months. The first time it happened I wasn’t sure what was wrong, but I assumed it was the cable modem (wrong word, since it is not a modulator-demodulator, but oh well). It wasn’t. Turned out that the line from the back of the house, across the yard to the cable box in a neighbor’s yard had failed. Time-Warner was good enough to come out and fix it after a couple of days, once I got through the phone hell to someone who knew what they were doing.

Well, it failed again, but this time I am pretty sure of the culprit. She is lanky, and fuzzy. She whines when we shut her up in her crate and she barks in the backyard. Yes, my dog, or rather our new dog. We have a lovely old golden retriever who may be the sweetest dog of all time, but some six months ago, we got a german shepherd/border collie/aussie shepherd mix. She is a handful, and she will chew on almost anything she can get her mouth on. It seems that they did not bury the cable very deep, and she dug it up and chewed on it.

However, that is not what I came to write about. For the second time in the recent past I am without internet, and it occurred to me that my computer feels crippled without the internet. For some of you that may seem strange, but for me it does. I got started late on computers. I am now past 50, and that means that the earliest computers I remember were as big as my living room and had the name IBM on them. I remember they first hand held calculators; my dad bought one, a Bowman 10. I was past 35 when I got my first job with a computer. Amazing part of the job interview was typing up a memo and printing it. I had never sat at a computer before, but I managed it. What amazes me is that I did it better than the other applicants…which does not say much for them.

It was later that summer that I got my first computer. Remember, summer of 1996, and I had a 286 with 2mb of RAM, and two 40MB MFM hard drives. It was put together with spare parts by a friend. I learned Windows 3.1 and then Windows 95 on that computer, with eventual upgrades from other friends. A year later I was working at Dell doing Tech Support. I suppose I learn quickly.

I remember signing up for a free AOL trial just to try out the internet. I remember using Netzero, back when it was still free. All of this was dial-up of course, so I didn’t spend hours at a time online. If I wasn’t actually doing anything I closed the connection. Of course, there wasn’t as much to the internet then.

Now, I sit here writing on my disconnected computer and it feels like it is only half there, when I have no MSN messenger and email, and Wikipedia, and gizmodo and a hundred other website all at my fingertips.

Just last night, I was on Dada.net downloading music and using Wikipedia and last.fm to listen to songs before I downloaded them. I would never even have thought of that ten years ago.

As a student of history, and a fan of science fiction, there is one thing that the science fiction writers of the 40s and 50s got wrong. None of them saw the personal computer. None of them saw that each of us would have huge computing power right in front of us. Most of them saw a World Wide Computer Network that we would access through a terminal, and now we half come around to the point where they are nearly right. Our computers are still very powerful, but without the knowledge of the internet at their beck and call, it feels much less powerful, almost crippled.

I guess I will go play Dragon Age for a while to remind myself that there still is a lot to my computer without the internet.

This Isn’t Your Dad’s Sherlock Holmes

For my birthday this year, I was given a present of dinner and a movie. It seems only fair that I should give a review of both. The somewhat funny part is that it is also entirely fitting that this double review be handled together since both dinner and movie were experienced at the same place, the Alamo Drafthouse.

Now, for those who do not live in Texas, you may need an explanation of the Alamo Drafthouse. Imagine that someone found a wonderful use for an older theater. In the case of the Drafthouse they have found a use for at least three here in Austin. The theaters are among the earliest multi-screen theaters in town with 4-6 screens; at least the two I have visited have 4 and 6 screens each. They take the old theater, and they rip out ever other row of seats (I suppose it means they have lots of spares) and they put in long skinny tables. Now, one of the reasons why I love it is because that means I have all the legroom I need. At 6’4” that is a relatively important consideration. But, even better, they serve food and drinks…and yes, I mean drinks, beer, wine, etc.

Now, the food isn’t great, but it is good. My favorite is the Raging Bull Pizza, with Pepperoni, Canadian Bacon and Sausage. I suppose that if this were to be a proper restaurant review I would review more of the food, but oh well. My son had Porky’s Pepperoni Pizza, my wife had Fish and Chips, and my Mother-in-Law had a sandwich and everyone enjoyed their food.

I cannot really comment on drinks with dinner and during the movie, because I don’t drink. I just never really developed a taste for the stuff and never really saw a reason to, after I finished growing up, but my wife and mother-in-law had beer with dinner.

So, the Alamo Drafthouse gets a big thumbs up, so what about the movie?

Sherlock Holmes is one of the few subjects where a bit of my own personal history is important to how I feel about the movie. I am a fan. I discovered Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories years ago, and not only have I read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories, but I have read a few other things by Doyle as well. In addition, I am a fan of many of the movies that have been made from the stories. I enjoy Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes, though I am not a big fan of Nigel Bruce’s bumbling Doctor Watson. I am a huge fan of Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes and have all of them on DVD. I have seen at least a half dozen versions of the Hound of the Baskervilles with everyone from Jeremy Brett (the best) to Stewart Granger (the worst), with a few interesting performances in between, like Tom Baker (of Doctor Who fame).

Also, I am a purist when it comes to Holmes. I don’t mind an actor’s interpretation, but I do mind a writer’s interpretation. Of course, I should throw in a caveat here that I am not very impressed with the writer’s who turn books and short stories into movies. My experience tells me that writers who write novels and stories are much better than the hacks who turn them into movie scripts. If this were not the case, then we would not have so many awful movie’s made from books and stories, like Dune, Enemy Mine…oh, I don’t feel like trying to remember any others at the moment. I dislike movie writers because they don’t trust the material that was written by far better writers than they are.

I could go on, but this isn’t about how Hollywood ruins great stories.

Sherlock Holmes, with Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law

The biggest complaint I have about the movie comes from that deep seated Sherlock Holmes fan within me, and ties back exactly to the title of this review, except, this isn’t my Sherlock Holmes either. This is not a movie for purists. The tone and feel of this movie is nothing like Doyle’s stories, which means that I am actually happy that they didn’t try to use one of Doyle’s stories as the basis for the plot. In fact, in some ways the plot is more like a Victorian DaVinci Code. But, that also isn’t the movies main failure from a Holmesian standpoint. This is an action movie, and Doyle’s stories are not action stories, so whether it was a personal choice of Doyle’s or a sign of the times, the movie is not in the style of Doyle. I am not sure that is such a bad thing, since we have Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes, which is in most ways a very just and quite excellent rendition of Doyle’s stories.

Now, after having given you all the reasons why I might not like the movie, let me state now, that I did. It is not a great movie, but it is a good movie. Robert Downey, Jr. gives a strong performance, though at times he is overshadowed by Jude Law, whose performance is excellent. I find the choice of Law to be as unsurprising as the choice of Downey. Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised, Downey was chosen for his star power. He makes the movie a bigger draw, while it would have been a better movie with Law as the star. I liked the fact that they underplayed Holmes’ English accent. A few turns of phrase spoken correctly can go a long way. I was impressed with Robert Downey, Jr. because there was no Tony Stark in his performance. He was Holmes, but unfortunately, the coat didn’t quite fit, at least in my opinion. Not that he seemed uncomfortable in the role, but he just did not really seem to be English.

The rest of the cast was good, with the exception of Jude Law, who makes a great Watson. Nigel Bruce’s bumbling Watson is nowhere to be seen. This Watson is strong and smart, probably smarter, or at least quicker of wit than Doyle’s original, and thoroughly English. Rachel McAdams is good as Irene Adler and Mark Strong is suitably menacing as Lord Blackwood.

I like the plot, which at least at its foundation is suitably Sherlockian. Holmes would have loved to expose anyone attempting to use magic to cover their intentions. I was not terribly fond of the fight scenes, which were cut (I don’t think that the filming had anything to do with it) a bit too frenetically. It is at times hard to follow what is happening, which I consider a near fatal flaw in a fight scene. Holmes two one-on-one fights are okay, the one in the opening sequence, and the one in the fighting pit (though this last is terribly unHolmesian), but the group fight scenes are mostly a hard to follow blur of action and slow-mo. The one other good fight scene is the one in the shipyard with the giant, the comic elements thrown into the fight scene work perfectly.

One last thing before I wrap this up. I did not like that no explanation was given to explain the connection between Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes. For those of you who did not understand it, you need to read Scandal in Bohemia. Irene Adler is the Woman, Sherlock Holmes’ one that got away.

So, where do we stand? I liked it. As a Sherlock Holmes fan, I found it less than satisfying, but as a movie fan, I enjoyed it thoroughly. It may eventually find a place on my movie shelf, but it will not find a place among my collection of Sherlock Holmes movies. It just really doesn’t belong there. Good as it is, this really isn’t Sherlock Holmes.

The Problem of the US Gadgethead

In case I haven't mentioned it before, I am a gadgethead. Unfortunately, I am a somewhat pathetic gadgethead, because I don't make enough money to truly indulge my passion.

Now, that should not be construed to suggest that I don’t have a fair number of gadgets. Let’s see…cellphone, PDA, UMPC, MP3 player (though I gave it to my son), DSLR camera, laptop, and desktop computer. Sure, I could have a few more, but it isn’t the number of gadgets that get you the label of gadgethead. No, it is the yearning in your heart that marks you as a gadgethead.

Can you identify all the following acronyms without looking them up?

PDA, UMPC, PMP, MID

If you answer yes, then you might be a gadgethead.

So, I have a new gadget that I lust after. If you are a follower of this blog, then you might have seen this post…I Think I'm in Love. Well, this post is a good example of the problem of the US gadgethead. Please note the date on that post, February 2009. It is now late December of that same year, and the Toshiba TG01 has not yet reached any US cellphone carrier.

It’s enough to make me cry.

Well, maybe not. See, I found a new love.



This is the HTC HD2. It has an even larger screen than the Toshiba, 4.3 inches. I still haven’t managed to replace my PDA and Cellphone with a smartphone, and if I had my wish, it would be this one.

Of course, that is if the darn thing ever reaches a US carrier. I would prefer that it be Verizon, since I am already with them, but I might consider switching for this phone, and a CDMA version isn’t out yet (bonus points for knowing what CDMA is).

I have waited nearly a year to see the Toshiba on these shores and now there is something new I would rather have. But, of course, I cannot afford to buy an unlocked one, so I have to wait to see who gets it and when.

And, it isn’t just cellphones, UMPCs, PMPs, and MIDs are also in the same boat. There are these incredible gadgets being built out there, in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere, but it takes forever for them to reach the US, and when they do there is usually something even better that has already been released elsewhere. You would think we were some backwater country, based on how devices get delivered across the world.

Makes me wonder if I wouldn’t be happier living in Europe.

What Do I Really Want for Christmas?

What Do You Really Want for Christmas?

Though I doubt it was intended, this Gizmodo contest got my mind wandering down an old path. What do I really want for Christmas? Now, in keeping with the intent of the contest I started to think about things like a larger wide-screened iPhone on a different carrier. And yes, I want that but I find it doesn’t really come close to what I REALLY want for Christmas.

When asked what I want for Christmas, I always think of my childhood, which is longer ago than I really want to lay claim to, but what I always remember is the toys.

What I really want for Christmas is toys.

The problem is that the toys I like now are way too expensive. They require lots of planning before the purchase and that sort of destroys the idea.

Several years ago, my wonderful wife found a way. She made me a robe. It was a tremendous robe. It was heavy, thick terry cloth. It was like wrapping yourself in an enormous towel. I wore it until it literally fell apart.

But, as great a gift as the robe was, my wife took it an extra step. After putting the robe on I reached into the pockets and found something. I pulled out several tiny die cast metal airplanes.

I am not sure that I can adequately describe how it made me feel. Even now, as I write this I am tearing up. It was as if I was suddenly ten years old again. I still have some of them. A few got into my son’s hands and did not fare too well, but even that was okay because he got as much fun out of them as I would have at that age.

So, what do I really want for Christmas?

I want to be ten years old again, with a pile of Matchbox and Hot Wheels and Legos under the tree, and to be on vacation from school without a single bill to pay and or deadline to worry about. Even just for one day.

That would be my perfect Christmas gift.

What's Wrong...

Page Two: Not Rocket Science

This voices an opinion that I have felt for a long time. There are others that have said the same or similar things, and if I can find them, I will link them here. I thought about writing my own version of this, but I doubt I could do better.

In case you are wondering why I put this under technology...

It is my opinion that part of the problem is the internet. We sit in our little cubicles and read everything and then spout venom that we would never do face to face. The internet gives us a degree of anonimity behind our usernames and avatars, and so we say things we would fear to give voice to where others would see our faces.

First Impressions of Dragon Age: Origins

Well, I pre-ordered DA:O from Amazon with the special shipping that gets it to you on the day the game appears, and so I got mine on Tuesday evening. My son almost immediately went nuts. He has been looking forward to this almost as long as I have. We have both played Neverwinter Nights, both 1 and 2 and enjoyed them. Unfortunately for him, his grades suck at the moment and he won’t be playing it real soon.

The installation takes a while, but that is understandable, for such a large game. In the box, there are codes for two different add-ons for the game, a Shale creature and the Dragon Blood Armor. Interestingly, the Dragon Blood Armor is also going to appear in Mass Effect 2. If the pictures seen in the DA:O box are correct, the Mass Effect armor will look radically different from the other armors in that game. In fact, the Mass Effect armor looks a lot like a full suit of historical plate armor, but stylized and modernized.

And yes, I know enough to make statements like that. I spent nine years making replicas of medieval armor. Check out Red Dragon Armoury.

Now, back to the game.

Character Creation is a fairly long process, if you don’t use some of the time saving presets. The character creator is more like Oblivion than like Neverwinter Nights or Mass Effect. It is a bit more advanced than Neverwinter Nights 2. You can change dozens of features, which is cool, but it is much harder to make a grotesque character than it was in Oblivion. It is easier to get back to the defaults, and the changes seem to have less effect on each other.

One cool feature is that DA:O creates a portrait for you based on the character appearance that you create, and then you can alter the portrait. You can change the background, the position of the head, and the expression, then lock everything down and start the game.

I chose a Human Noble as my Origin story, and I have only played one character so far, so I cannot comment on the others, but where you start the game depends on which Origin story you choose. That is a somewhat cool idea that will keep the game interesting on replays, and it gives you an immediate impact on the story based on your choices, which is exactly what an RPG should do. This is also different from Mass Effect where all the character background choices are in the past, but they have an effect on the story later on. I will be watching for quests and content that refers back to the Origin story.

So, I made it through the first battle, which happens even before you leave home. I won’t give away more of the story, but it gets you started slowly, which is a good thing, because the controls are totally different, different from Neverwinter Nights, different from Mass Effect (PC), different from Oblivion, different from any game I have ever played. The game uses W and S to move forward and back, but you turn rather than backing up and instead of using A and D for side to side movement, it uses Q and E, and when you use any of these, you turn and run in that direction in relation to where the camera is facing, no side stepping. You can run and turn your character with the mouse, but it requires that you press and hold the right mouse button. You can also right-click on the ground, and your character will move there. You do a lot of things by right-clicking, which can get a little confusing, especially since some places you have to left-click.

I might write another review with information about the skills and spells system, but that is all mechanics which don’t really affect my enjoyment of the game. The one thing I will say is that it is not like Oblivion, where you advance your skills by using them and then that causes you to raise levels. DA:O uses experience points (XP) and you get a lot of XP from killing monsters, but you also get XP for finding items, completing quests, unlocking things (just one example) and I assume there will be more ways to gain XP. I really liked the system in Oblivion/Morrowind, but it does lead to the abuses. You won’t gain levels in DA:O by jumping off cliffs or sneaking along behind people. I cannot say yet that I really like the system. I haven’t tried it out enough yet, but it isn’t bad, so far.

Finally, the story, so far not too bad, but more than a little predicable, I foresaw both of the major plot turns in the story. I won’t give them away, but to me at least they were pretty obvious, especially if you think about what RPGs usually tend to do. First, they like to give you something personal to fight for. Second, they tend to like to cut you off and make you search for your allies and friends, and of course treachery tends to be a common theme.

More later, when I have played more.

A New News Paradigm

The True Significance of the Tablet

This blog post and the comments about it have provided me with a great deal of inspiration. This is actually the second essay inspired by it. The first was the previous post about the music industry. It was not directly related to the post, but it serves as a foundation for what follows.

When I was young, America got its news from two sources, its local newspaper and Walter Cronkite. Now, I say that somewhat tongue in cheek, but it really was true. I grew up in the age of TV, and Walter Cronkite really was that important. I am not old enough to speak to the importance of radio as a source of news.

In the TV age, we got our news from the TV, both local and national. Newspapers continued to be an important source of news. The newspaper was local, but through the AP, UPI and other news services it carried stories from across the nation and around the world. As the broadcast TV of my youth (yes, I can remember a time before cable) changed into cable TV, we were offered more choices, but the news paradigm remained unchanged. Instead of the nightly network news, we may have watched CNN, but the format and delivery remained familiar.

But, we have moved beyond the TV age. Yes, we all still have TVs and some of us still watch the network news. Newspapers are not faring as well though. We have entered the Internet Age, and many of us get our news through the new medium.

In the comments to the blog linked above is a reference to newspapers as a news aggregation. News aggregators are common across the web. But I think that many have failed to recognize that we have, to an extent, become our own news aggregators. Most of the people I know get their news from many sites.

It might be because we like CNN over MSNBC but it may also be (and in my opinion more likely) that we do not get all our news from one site. And, it is not just that we use more than one news site, but that we use specialized or focused sites. I don’t go to MSNBC or CNN, I go to Fox sports for sports news and Gizmodo for techie news and then I check the formula one site, and…

I think you get the picture. I don’t rely on any one site for my news. I browse several sites, grazing here and there finding what I want and consuming it.

And I think that many of you are like me.

This change, which I think has already occurred, has had and could have several far reaching effects. One will be discussed in a future essay, where I will be working together ideas from this essay and the previous one.

Now, back to Fakesteve and his idea that the tablet will be tied to some “…entirely new way to convey information…” I think that he too has missed something.

It’s already happened.

Well, that’s not completely true, at least not the way that Fakesteve is thinking about. Many sites already include video when they can. Gizmodo is a good example. We have moved well past the old standard of news, from a few aggregators to hundreds or thousands, from generalized to specialized, and from single media to mixed media.

No one knows what the next change will be, but I believe it is a mistake to think that there will be one new way to convey information and to bind yourself to one “format”, or to withhold a product waiting for “it” to appear.

The future is diversity. I am not sure that there will be a single new standard for conveying information. There may not be a new equivalent to the newspaper or TV.

The iPhone did not succeed at changing the landscape alone. Without iTunes and the Appstore, the iPhone would be just another cellphone.

The tablet, whether Apple’s or Courier or any of the existing tablets are going to change the landscape only when content providers and programmers start to create content and apps formatted and aimed at tablets.

Maybe Steve Jobs can pull that off, but I think that the change will come, even without him.