I went through half a dozen home theater receivers last year, trying to find one that would work connected to my Mac Mini media PC. Here are the results:
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What set me off was the post And the He-Man Movie Is Back to Being F@#$ed about some nobody writer, egged on by Warner Bros., fucking up the script to a potential Masters of the Universe movie.
Warners sees the big-screen version as a gritty fantasy and reimagines Adam as a soldier who sets off to find his destiny, happening upon the magical world of Eternia. There, Skeletor has raised a technological army and is bent on eradicating magic.
A technological army? Robots? Why? Well, robots are natural cannon fodder, I concluded. No one cares when they get blown-up, cut in half or crushed (just ask HELPeR, a Battle Droid, or the Terminator). Having disposable baddies lets you get action in your movie without having to worry about killing off any beloved characters and risking tying your hands when it comes time for a sequel. But wouldn’t an action movie where no one dies be better described as a motion movie? Transformers: The Movie killed off characters in spades, and it still remains one of the most memorable movies from my childhood. It never had a sequel.
True, the reason so many G1 Transformers were killed off was to make room for new toys, but I would rather have old characters killed off and new ones brought in than to let a franchise wallow in its own ossified nostalgia. Must He-Man, Transformers, or GI Joe (whoa… all movies) be the exact same things from our childhood? We grew up, why couldn’t they? (OK, maybe some of us didn’t grow up so well, so I guess maybe toy franchises are no different.)
But with this eye-rolling example of a writer who just doesn’t get it writing the He-Man movie, plus the huge shit Michael Bay has taken on the Transformers franchise, not to mention the sound and fury signifying nothing that was Wolverine, I feel like comic book movies are suffering through the same Dark Age that comic books went through in the ’90s.
It took some time to digest, but soon the better draftsmen in the field began to interject their art with realism and reverence. … Artists who draw in the cartoon style of the Eighties or the hyper-thyroid style of the Nineties are out of fashion — perhaps forever.
This excerpt is taken from Our Gods Wear Spandex, how Alex Ross’ Kingdom Come broke the mold that had stifled comic books in their garish pre-bagged, chromium-covered trappings throughout the Nineties. It was a time when talentless hacks churned out mediocre characters and horrible art. Sound like something playing at a theater near you?
The domain www.mikeandbenshow.com expires today, taking with it the all the online memories of “The Mike & Ben Show” — a college TV show that I haven’t been a part of for eight years. But please take a moment to browse old episode synopses and snarky email exchanges, not to mention the prominent button on the front page linking to the NEW site… which itself no longer exists.
I assure you, you’ll be the first non-googlebot visitor to the site in years.
Myst is coming to the iPhone! I also just realized my iPhone has more processing power than the LC III I first played the game on. Can’t wait.
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Who’s #1? You are, Number Six!
I recently had cause to re-watch The Prisoner because a friend of mine hadn’t seen it in nearly eight years and wanted to revisit the series. On the DVD cover was the slogan “no man is just a number” and she remarked on how that saying actually betrayed the intent of the series — a revelation that left me taken aback. To me, Number Six was never just a number, as he so adamantly asserted. He was a free man. But then I was reminded that in the final episode (spoiler alert!), it was revealed that the long-elusive Number One turned out to be none other than Number Six himself. He was a number after all.
OK, that title doesn’t exactly make sense. I was also going to try “K2: The Book-Widowmaker”, but that’s even worse. Something something ‘books as kindling’ something something. Maybe “What are you reading for?” Well, here’s a review of the Kindle 2 from someone who doesn’t own, nor plan to buy, one. And why would I, when I already have this sweet iPhone?
Speaking of iPhone, Wired thought they’d simplify the design of the Kindle 2. Yikes. While it shows all the innovation of a giant iPhone with an extra button, it does get to the bare essentials: page left and page right. I can’t believe this design was newsworthy, since it’s just simple to the point of being simplistic, especially given the other things the Kindle can do.
Still, the omission of the keyboard does beg the question: how much typing does a person normally do in a book?
As for the utility of the actual Kindle, I would first ask myself if I read enough books in a year to make up the $360 price difference. That’s a huge initial cost — as Jon Stewart pointed out, “You mean you have to buy the books, too?” It is cool that there’s a web browser and free wireless internet out of the deal, but it seems like less a feature for the consumer than another venue for Amazon to sell you books. Why else would they give it away for free? I think of it the way Microsoft grants me an Xbox Live Silver account for free, which is an online account that only allows me to buy their downloadable content. How generous!
It also bothers me that the Kindle is a vertically integrated system. You aren’t buying a book, you’re buying software for the Kindle. Just like how the recording industry wanted you to buy your vinyl records all over again as CDs, it feels like Amazon wants to sell you your books all over again. One for your shelf, one for your Kindle. (Caveat: this from someone who buys iPhone apps and songs for Rock Band.)
Were it me, I would instead go with a netbook, since they cost about the same, have a better screen, bigger keyboard, software (they even come with a free web browser!), plus you can hack them any way you like. There’s even a great hack to put OS X on a Dell Mini 9 netbook.
Regarding the free wireless internet, you can always tether your netbook with your jailbroken iPhone, since you’re paying for that already. But that’s just the way I’d do it — instead of one slim thing to so a specific task, I’ll use three that, well… kinda/sorta fit.
Despite all this, the Kindle does fall into the Goldilocks zone for an e-book reader: it is just the right size to do something an iPhone is too small to do enjoyably and a laptop is too big to do conveniently. And that e-ink display is very pleasant to read. If it’s the right tool for the right job, then you should go for it. So have fun with your reading, I’ll be with the rest of the LA lizard scum out by the pooool!
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Maybe I’m doing it wrong.
Consumerist posted this beautifully animated short visualizing the credit crisis.
Incidentally, I sure hope I don’t find out how insanely popular this video game reviewer is.
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How to choose the right CMS
I love that they mention a list of what CMSs to avoid and it contains one item.
This is why I hate CMS software — their incessant, misguided need to over-abstract every little detail. Take for example Drupal’s system for including additional tables into your existing MySQL database. Drupal would have you create a needlessly complex multidimensional array of all the elements in your new data table schema, created with a separate function and called by another custom Drupal function. Because I guess including the actual SQL to create a table was just too fucking simple.
So here’s Drupal’s way of doing it. I hope you like nested parens!