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12:01 PM

Reviews

If you have never seen the short film 12:01 PM, then you have missed out.

Don’t confuse 12:01 PM with 12:01, a horrid movie update of the same basic plot starring Jonathan Silverman and Helen Slater. 12:01 PM is about a man, Myron Castleman (played wonderfully by Kurtwood Smith) who appears to be repeating the same hour, from 12:01 PM to 1:01 PM. Its kind of like Groundhog Day, only its just the one hour. Looping a whole day over and over again isn’t really all that scary, because you have a whole day, but how much can you really do in an hour. Anyway, Myron realizes that he is repeating the hour and tries to figure out how to get out of the time bounce, but one hour just doesn’t seem to be enough to get anything done.

This is a masterpiece of short film making as its only 25 minutes long and yet in just about every way is more satisfying than most feature films.

Now, I bet you are wondering why it is I’m talking about a short film that was made in 1990, over 15 years ago. Its because I really would like to see this short film again. I’d like to own it on DVD. Its only 25 minutes long, but I would gladly pay $20 for a DVD with this on it and nothing else. The problem is… its not available. Well, not in the US anyway.

I really hate region codes. They suck. As does the NTSC and PAL crap. There is a box set for sale over on the Amazon UK site called Academy Award Winning Shorts – Cinema Collection – 56 Movies – One Box. It looks like a pretty damn kickass box set. There is a full list of the shorts over on Play.com. I want to own this box. Of course, its confusing, because the Amazon site and the Special Features section on Play both say its Region 0 or All Regions, but the details on Play say its Region 2, which is more likely. But it doesn’t matter, because its PAL, which means my TV won’t play it. And this box, which is just awesome for its content, is not available in the US (Region 1) or in NTSC. And I just find that to be really crappy.

So, I’m going to do something I don’t normally do and make an open call for piracy… if they won’t sell it to me, I have to resort to other methods. If you know where I can get a copy of 12:01 PM, point me at it. And if you work in the film industry and have any influence, put this on a Region 1 DVD and I’ll buy it, even if I already get a pirated copy.

The Golem`s Eye

Reviews

Grabbing a few minutes here and there, the occasional bus ride to and from work, and my recent trip to Jamaica, I finished reading the second book of the Bartimaeus Trilogy, The Golem’s Eye.

Once again we fight Nathanial, a.k.a. John Mandrake, dealing with the magician government. He’s got a new master and a new job working for the Internal Affairs department, and he’s been tasked with tracking down the Resistance. Bartimaeus, as usual, doesn’t want to be there, but bound to service helps Nathanial make his way. The trouble this time comes in the form of a Golem, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the great war with Prague, trashing buildings and businesses of reputable magicians. Everyone wants to point fingers at the Resistance, but Nathanial feels there is more going on and begins his investigation with Bartimaeus’ help.

Kitty, one of the Resistance members introduced slightly in the first book, becomes a main character here and gives us insight into the Resistance, which isn’t the organized rebel movement the magician’s fear it is. In fact, they are little more than petty thieves and vandals, but a new conspiritor shows up and begins to usher them into something far more dangerous.

Over all, I really enjoyed this book. There is something refreshing about this dark and miserable tale that is missing from the Harry Potter series. I look forward to picking up the third and final book of this trilogy.

Jamaica

Random Thoughts

2006 has been a banner year for my family. In February, I got married. In June, my younger brother got married. And two days ago, my older brother got married. I know what you are thinking… “Dude, the title of this post is Jamaica!” Yeah, we all flew down to Jamaica and my new sister-in-law and her husband got hitched on the beach.

Well, not on the beach, but on a gazeebo thingy on a little pier like thing out from the beach. It was fairly cool.

And Jamaica itself is nothing to shake a stick at… unless you really just love shaking sticks at things, because I suppose if that kind of thing is your bag, well, just shake away, my friend, shake away. The beaches are nice, the water is warm, the pools are cool, the jacuzzis are hot, and when you stay at a Sandals resort all the food and drinks are free.

We stayed at the Sandals Royal Caribbean resort which is in Montego Bay… unfortunately it is being partially renovated at this time, so a couple of the restaurants were closed, but they have a private island, and that’s just sweet.

As always though, three nights anywhere just really is not enough time to really get into a vacation. The next one I swear is going to be at least a week.

The Pitfalls of Design

Gaming

As a gamer, I have often found myself uttering things that begin with “It can’t be that hard to…” followed by something that logically it can’t be that hard to design. For example, in many MMO games, friend lists usually have a hard cap, some games go high to start with while other games begin at 10 or 20. Later on, people will want more friends on their list and will say “It can’t be that hard to increase the size from 10 to 20.” And logically, they are right. In a perfect world, you’d just go into the code where the MaxFriendListSize variable is and change it from 10 to 20, or 50, or 200.

As a programmer, I have often found myself nearly exploding in a fiery ball of hate when a boss or customer says things that begin with “It can’t be that hard to…”, because honestly, if it wasn’t hard, we wouldn’t even be having the conversation we were having for them to be able to say that, I would have just done it. The problem is, that when designing a program, you literally can’t think of everything. You know, yes it wouldn’t be hard at all if there was in fact a MaxFriendListSize variable, but we didn’t think of that when writing the program because that number, 10, was only supposed to appear in one place, however, over time it ended up in 22 modules and one lazy coder even used that number to hack some other part of the program and when we changed it from 10 to 20 on one of our internal test servers the character models all doubled in size… grrr…

Seriously… This is exactly how programming works sometimes. You sit down and design out 500 features of your program, then, 18 months later, you realize that you need feature 501, but the best way to do number 501 involves redesigning 47 other features because 501 needs outputs or to share variables with some of those features, or 501 just kicked off an idea of a much more efficient design template that would make a number of other features work better.

Nothing, and I mean nothing in programming is ever easy. Its like getting to the end of writing a novel and deciding that “well, I don’t think the brother should be the killer, it should be the police officer” and now you have to rewrite half to book to make it all make sense.

Logic is cold

Gaming

Thanks to Scott for the original link.

One of the problems I find, not just in games but also in life, is that people have an unwillingness to accept logical truth. There is a basic dichotomy to any competative game: if someone wins, someone else has to lose.

Look at something non-MMO, like Baseball… the teams with the most wins last season still lost just over 40% of their games. The Mets and Yankees finished with .599 records. 97 wins and 65 losses. And its considered a pretty good season. Yet somehow, in PvP games, lots of folks find that ratio, dying 4 out of 10 times you enter a fight, to be completely and utterly unacceptable. On the other hand, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays had a .377 season, 61 wins and 101 losses. More than 6 out of 10 times, they lost… if people can’t accept a 40% death rate, a 60+% rate would drive them completely off the “unfair” deep end. If you are winning 6 out of 10 fights… someone out there is only winning 4 out of 10.

There seems to be, among players of computer games, a feeling that somehow them being human playing against a computer (even if its actually another person controlling the enemy on their screen) gives them an edge, that the game will be “more fair”. Of course, the idea of “more fair” is a total waste of time. There is fair and there is not fair. Something cannot be more or less fair, once it stops being fair it is not fair. What they mean by “more fair” is that they will win more often. Against computer AI in most games this is true simply because the game doesn’t learn. It may kick the crap out of you all the time when you first play, but as you play more you will (should) get better, and the computer will not. Eventually, you’ll win all the time because you will have learned all the moves it is programmed to use. Computer games are old dogs, and they don’t learn new tricks.

But when a player takes control of the enemy, now you are playing against… you. When he loses, just like you, he’ll learn. The both of you will learn, and keep challenging each other, and over time what will show is that one of you is better at learning than the other and therefore stays ahead better, winning more often. One of you will be the Yankees, and the other one will be the Devil Rays. And there is nothing wrong with this. Its true. Its logical. And from the point of view of the Devil Rays, totally and completely unfair.

So, what’s the answer? There isn’t one. Like I said, its not fair, and that’s just the way it is. But I will leave you with a thought…

It comes from the movie Rudy, about Daniel Ruettiger. Rudy doesn’t make the real team, but he makes the practice team. In practice, one of the real team guys yells at Rudy for trying too hard. Rudy fires back with this great line (which of course I can’t find right now) about how he has to do his best in order to keep the real team at their best. When you PvP, keep in mind that you may not win all the time, or even most of the time, but by God you can make them work for it.

Very Non-Idle Hands

Random Thoughts

Time magazine has run a story about the Best Invenstions of 2006.

Their cream of the crop is YouTube. Obviously the runaway success (company sold for like $1.6 billion) of it all had an impact on their placement on the list. Sharing things on the internet isn’t new, but it really has never been more easy. Consider YouTube the ultimate of the “right place, right time” set. It could never have happened five years ago.

Now… my opinions on the rest of the list…

As a proof of concept, the Horizon Fuel Cell makes me kind of giddy in a “Wow, not that is a giant leap forward” sort of way. Sure, this is just a toy, but it proves to more than just science geeks that an engine really can run on water. Awesome.

Yeah, the Tesla Roadster 100 costs $100,000, but the sheer fact that Tesla Motors put out a fully electric sports car that can do 0 to 60 in 4 seconds. Well, its just cool, and in a weird way its them finally living up to the Tesla name.

The Clever car is an ideal… its great, until that idiot in his Hummer literally turns you into a chunky paste. Perhaps one day when cities become more compact and the roads aren’t so full of people rushing to get somewhere they live too far away from. The Mark V falls into that category too, and 3,145 miles per gallon just sounds too good to be viably true unless society changes to allow such flimsy vehicles.
First to enter in on the “Duh” category, the Black & Decker Simple Start answers the question of “What if my car battery dies in the middle of nowhere?” as directly as possible. Nice.

I’ve never really been on a boat, but part of me always glorfies life at sea. I would either want an old wooden pirate ship, or a sun21. Maybe a combination of both. Oh, and I’d also need an Innespace Sea Breacher. SeaQuest DSV here we come!

My wife really needs a Loc8tor. The hovering bed, however, I don’t think anyone needs. And as cool as the concept of the Wovel is, you would just look like such a dork using it. My older brother and his soon to be wife have ruined a section of carpet in their home, which would have been prevented by the self-lifting Oliso iron.

I hate seafood, and really I had never considered that it took two minutes to kill a lobster when you boil it, but if you have, don’t worry, with the CrustaStun you can now electrocute them in 5 seconds. I imagine the lobster tank at the local restaurant to be like a miniature death row leading to the electric chair now. And while faster isn’t always better, something inside me both cheers and cringes when I read about the Moo Bella icecream machines. There is no doubt about my cringing when it comes to the pudding-like coffee espesso. But the fruit and vegetable Lotus Sanitizing System definately looks cool.

First in the “man, I wish I had that” category is the NanoNuno umbrella. Adding to that in the “man, I wish I had that as a kid” subcategory is Nike’s Macro React clothing. No, I didn’t wish I had a dress, they make shirts for men. And just as I’m getting my hopes up, they make me weep for the future with the Hug Shirt. Why is it that I imagine this being sold by Apple, it being called the “iShirt” and them adding music and videos to it?

I’m not even going to bother linking to any of the crap in the Toys section of the invention list. Its all crap. Okay, the talking mirror is kind of neat, but really if you have a talking automated house, the talking face isn’t really any better than the disembodied voice, because, honestly, unless you install like 40 of these things, what are the chances you are going to be in the room with the mirror when stuff happens? Oh, and NASCAR sucks.

The new drunk driver test that measures skin’s light reflectivity scares me just a little. Part of me is scared by the possibility of being falsely identified as drunk with it, and part of me is scared by the possibility that its never wrong. “No, Officer, I’m just a naturally dull person.” I can’t, however, say anything bad about Gardasil, a vaccine for a virus that can cause cancer. Good work. On the other hand, I’m a little weirded out by Allerca’s hypoallergenic cats, bred for your comfort. And in the “one step closer to cyborgs” bin goes Realive, a suit that helps people with muscle rehabilitation by triggering the affected arm to mimic the movements of the “good” arm. Cool stuff. In the “but can they be trusted to use it for good” category comes a water-harvesting machine that sucks clean water right out of the air.

Woodshop teachers of the world rejoiced at the invention of SawStop’s finger saving saw, when it detects that the blade is sinking into flesh, it stops and retracts, leaving the user with only a nick. People trying to dispose of bodies were not amused. Another entry in the “Duh” category of inventions that just make sense and its just so F-ing cool that someone actually invented the damn thing, the LifeLine, so that no firefighter has to simply jump and pray again when things go bad.

The military, of course, invents stuff all the time, and a few of their items made it on the list… first up is the Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot (BEAR), go figure, the military invents robots and they save lives instead of ending them. Next we get the M80 Stiletto, a boat that weighs 45 tons and only draws 3 feet of water (for you non boat people, that means only 3 feet of the boat hull is submerged, so it can go in really shallow water). Lastly we get the StrawJet, a machine that takes straw and turns it into quality building material.

I really see no good purpose for the Power Flower, I mean, I think it looks ugly. On the other hand, solar cells that are so thin that they are printed directly onto building materials like this solar skin is just awesome. And the paper-thin, flexible lightbulbs from CeeLite make me hope they will replace ugly disgusting flourescent lighting in office buildings everywhere… not to mention my own kitchen.

And that is the end of their list, and this is the end of my post.

The Monster is Loose

Reviews

There is just something I like about Meat Loaf. Not the food… can’t stand the stuff usually, but the singer. This past week saw the release of Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose. And it is good.

Although… it is weak in places. Meat Loaf has always had a sort of semi-operatic tone to his voice, good for belting out ballads. Jim Steinman has always been great at writing songs that are touching, funny and moderately nasty all at once. The combination of the two of them have produced some fairly awesome songs like Paradise by the Dashboard Light, Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad, I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That), and more. And in some respects this album delivers. Steinman originally wrote It’s All Coming Back To Me Now for Meat Loaf, but Meat didn’t record it for Bat Out of Hell II, so he sold it to Celine Dion (and here I went 8 years without mentioning her on my website, damn)… Meat Loaf takes the song back, and the lyrics just fit him so much better than they did her. All of Steinman’s songs on the album are strong and as good as they ever were.

But, Jim had a heart attack and a couple of strokes that sidelined him for a while, and Meat Loaf, rather than wait, decided to push on with another writer… Desmond Child. Now, Desmond has produced lots of people and worked with tons of bands… but there is something here that, for me, just doesn’t work. The songs that Desmond worked on instead of Jim feel more generic, like they aren’t tailor made for Meat Loaf to record. They don’t have that… that special something that the Meat Loaf/Steinman collaborations have. And its a shame, the songs aren’t bad they just don’t pop, they don’t spark like the rest.

All in all though, Meat Loaf lays down another solid album, and its worth the money. A fine 3rd part for this trilogy. And I think I’m pretty safe calling it a trilogy, because the first one was 1977, the second was 1993 (16 years), and now 2006 (13 years)… if there is a fourth chapter, when Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman finish fighting and get back to working together, we can expect it right around 2021 when Meat Loaf will be 74. I’m not going to hold my breath.

NaNoWriMo

Random Thoughts

First off, Mr. Eko is dead. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it. If you understand it, well, I hope you already watched this week’s episode.

My problem with Mr. Eko was that when they introduced him as the silent butt kicking prayer stick guy, I liked him. His representation of a man with faith was cool, and looked to be a good introduction to the mix of people finding their faith only once they were stuck on the island. Then they had to go and make him just like everyone else as he decided that “the button” was his purpose. *sigh*

In a way, I’m glad he’s dead… So, what exactly does that have to do with the NaNoWriMo? I’ll tell you.

When I started thinking about the project, I have a handful of ideas swirling around in my head. Immediately, I narrowed it down to three. Then I tossed out one because it would work much better as a TV script instead of a novel, and that left me with two. I wrestled and anguished over which idea I would run with, and finally I picked one.

Then I started writing it… See, I’ve tried writing this story before. I know where it starts, and I know where it ends, and I even know a few places it has to go in the middle, but I’m missing all the inbetween parts. As expected, when I sat down and started writing, the story started not going where I wanted it to go. I got stuck, as I always do, trying to get from where I am to the next major plot point. I see where they should go, but my characters don’t seem to want to get there. And this is how it relates to Mr. Eko.

From the show, I get the feeling that someone wrote up the character of Eko as he was in the first few episodes. Silent butt kicker who, with Ana-Lucia helps the tail survivors actually survive the much harsher life they fall into as compared to the relative peace of the other group from season one. I think that it was intended for Eko to somehow die, perhaps sacrifice himself to save the other survivors, on their trip across the island, but the character proved so popular that they kept him alive. According to legend, Jack was the same way. The good doctor was supposed to die in the two hour premier, but they rewrote the part when Michael Keaton turned down the role. He went from a big name guest star to a smaller name major character. In Jack’s case it all turned out pretty well, but with Eko, it seems like they hadn’t considered what to do with him. Upon the tail survivors reaching the rest of the passengers, they made Ana-Lucia the fighter, and so they decided to make Eko pursue his faith, which lead him to the button, and the conflict of faith with Locke… and it was all pretty uninteresting, Eko’s half anyway.

When writing my story, the character I want to make the main character keeps trying to step back and let other people be in the spotlight. I keep pulling him back in, but it just feels forced. So I think I’m either going to have to scrap the idea until I find a way to make him the main character without it feeling forced, or just let him fade into the background and use somebody else. I don’t want to turn him into a Mr. Eko.

Anyway… that’s all I’ve got today.

The Monsters at My Door

Random Thoughts

October is over, my favorite month. And one helluva month it has been.

Last night was our first Halloween in our new home, an actual house in an actual neighborhood. See, when you live in apartments, especially ghetto apartments like I lived in, Halloween is scary for all the wrong reasons. You should be scared of the vampires and werewolves and other creatures of the night, you shouldn’t be scared of getting mugged or shot when you stumble across a drug deal. So, we decorated the house. A grave out front with a wheelbarrow full of bones, blood on the windows, a body hanging in the front bedroom window as a single bare light bulb swung behind it, and more… it was a hoot. And people seemed to really like it. Kids liked the scare, and parents stood in the street taking pictures.

The only downside was… well… we live in a fairly small neighborhood, and while we did get visitors from other neighborhoods, we really didn’t get that many Trick-or-treaters. So now we have this gigantic bowl of candy just daring me to eat it… bad candy, bad bad candy.

I was fairly happy with our visitors last night though… plenty of home made costumes, and not very many fairies and sports figures.

Sadly, though, staying at home means I didn’t go to the North River Tavern for their Halloween night… well, since I now know that kids stop coming around about 8pm, next year that’ll be when we close up the house and go out.

Hope you had a Happy Halloween.

Paladin

Gaming

When I run pen and paper compaigns, one thing I hate most is people who want to play a paladin. This is partly due to the the fact that most people really suck at playing a paladin, and partly due to the preconceived notion of a paladin.

The white suit of armor, lance, flag, holy, goody-goody… the restrictions set forth in the book descriptions and the fairy tales… its just… boring.

To me, a paladin is simply a devout warrior of the faith, and its that second part that is the rub. What if you are a devout warrior of a god that desires the subjugation of all people under his will? Under those conditions, would lying to someone be against your faith and cost you your powers?

This is where the true essence of roleplayin comes in. A good GM, in my opinion, will work with his player to outline the tenets of his faith and determine the shape of the paladin’s persona. From this, the GM will be able to extrapolate what constitutes challenges to the faith and what would cause the paladin to lose the favor of his god.

Now… you may be wondering why the heck this even comes up. Over an EN World, someone posed the question: If Dudley DoRight is entering the city of an evil overlord, and at the gates the guards are asking people if they are paladins, would the paladin lose his god’s favor for lying in order to get into the city?

Really, its a stupid question involving a contrived situation created by a lazy GM who simply wants to trap and torture his paladin player. What reason could an evil warlord have for instructing his minions to ask “Are you a paladin?” of each person who enters the gate? But further, this whole situation would only work if the player was indeed a Lawful Good paladin who followed a god that holds honesty in high regard. It would be better if the warlord instructed his people to keep a lookout for certain crests denoting paladins and their deities. Even better, if its just the Lawful Good Dudley DoRights that he fears, would be to hire a spell caster to guard the gates with Circle of Protection from Law and Circle of Protection from Good spells, preventing the DoRights from even approaching the gate.

There are just so many better ways to handle every aspect of this.