January 2003 Archives

We'll call this the "ABC post". Due to a weird series of events, I managed to be away from the house most of last night and still saw a lot of new television.

Veritas, the Quest is going to die a lingering Birds of Prey death. A decent, fun idea for the main plot, and a couple of very good character actors in supporting roles, but the idea to take a not-particularly-charismatic teen and make him central to a world-spanning plot designed to cast him as a sex symbol was a mistake. This is not Tomb Raider, but it desperately wants to be. Also, I don't know where the budget for the show went, but they definitely saved money on set lighting.

Miracles looks very promising. Reasonable creepy, some very good cinematography and very believable stunts, and of course Angus MacFadyen, whom you might remember from Braveheart (although he won a spot in my cult-favorite fanboy heart for playing Komodo in Warriors of Virtue). He plays a good almost-crazy (witness his role in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood -- the only part of the movie I entirely enjoyed). All this and Skeet Ulrich too. And the rest of the regular cast isn't bad, from what we've seen of them.

Finally, kudos to Alias for having the balls to completely change the entire dynamic of the show in one episode. Huge. Just when you were starting to think "oh man, the bad guys have got to start noticing some of this stuff", you find out you were oh so very right, and yet you still had no idea what was going on. Few characters on television shows are written well enough to make me feel slow-on-the-uptake, but Alias has two of them. Maybe three.

Hot new devices at a recent tech show:

They loaded a GPS into the newest Palm PDA coming out -- it was just a matter of time -- the iQue runs on the latest version of the Palm OS (5.1), on a 150 MHz Motorola MXL ARM 9 processor, comes with 32 MB of DRAM, an SD card slot and a (huge) 320 by 480 pixel TFT screen. It'll come with the MapSource City Select CD-ROM (for all the maps), a leather flip cover and USB cradle. It should retail for $589.

The fact that they have the Palm OS on a Pocket PC-class procressor (when it doesn't need a high end processor) just tickles me. I want one.

Except for the niggling bit of "THEY will always know where I am" paranoia, that is, but that's true of cell phones too. C'est la vie.

Crappy morning.

Threw two guys out of one of the adult league soccer games today. (Indoor soccer on a roller hockey rink? Sockey?) Called the rec league coordinator afterwards and resigned. I do not need that kind of stress.

Superbowl today. I've always liked Tampa and I only ever liked the Raiders because of Gruden, so you can see that my eggs are all in one basket.

National odds on the game say Oakland over Tampa 42-9? I think not. Let's sayyyy... 24-17, Tampa.

See, when the #1 Defense (Tampa) meets the #1 Offense (Oakland), one of them is going to make the other look like they don't deserve the title. My money* is on Tampa.

Unlike Dave, I've been pretty biased in my initial reaction to the new Daredevil movie coming out -- both because DD was never really one of my favorite characters and because I think the casting they went with is a horrorshow.

Now, I like Jennifer Garner -- I've been watching her in Alias for a couple of years and been satisfied by the physicality of the character -- very kickboxing, but they acknowledge that that's the training she has (notably in a great episode guest starring Tarantino), and it works. Her acting isn't quite up to the level of the two actors that play her parents, but then they are both amazing, and she is still very good. Not really pretty, but that's me.

Anyway, none of this information applies.

The difference is that Alias is basically realistic with it's combat scenes: Garner's character might (and frequently does) strike someone who just takes it in relative stride and smacks the crap out of her because she just doesn't have the mass. Conversely, look at the DD snippet linked above and count the number of pointless weapon-twirls racked up between the two characters. in thirty seconds.

And the wirework is flat out horrible. Flat. Out. Horrible.

No comments on Affleck's acting ability -- clearly, Matt Damon got the lion's share of talent in their divorce proceedings (going to go buy Bourne Identity tonight: yay!)

On TimMinear.net, Tim (co-creator) had the following to say today about Firefly's future,

"Also wanted to let everyone here know that Firefly is not dead. Not yet. Joss and us'ns are working on a new angle, the details of which I cannot get into just yet. Also, I'm finishing editing my last episode. I think it's gonna be good. And 'Trash' is lots of fun and we're finishing 'Heart Of Gold.' So some day, at the very least, ya'll get for certain three more hours of us."

So I've been looking for a tool that sync's up my Palm Scheduler/Addressbook with Outlook.

It should be obvious to anyone at this point that involvement of Outlook in the above sentence has nothing to do with any decision that I made, because I would never make any decision that involved Outlook, except possibly "I've decided that everyone in the world should stop using Outlook. Right now." But I digress.

Anyway, I found something that will do that. It claims to be the best thing on the market for doing things like that (which is an easy claim to make since it's apparently the only thing that does it), but it costs fifty bucks, which I am certainly not going to pay (and which no one else is going to buy for me).

So I kept looking. I actually found something a little later that looked like it might work, plus it actually upgrades the scheduler/addressbook in my Palm so that it does something I REALLY would like it to do*.

Problem: I installed the demo (from a major and reputable Palm software site), went to the source site to buy the full version after dinking around with it for awhile, because I decided it was cool even if it couldn't sync with Outlook, and found out that the version I had ("available now for $24.45!") wasn't available anymore. The new version (with a new name) was, after buying all the optional add-ons that actually made it do what I wanted...

fifty bucks.

Right. So I deleted the demo version and moved on.

Skip to the next day, when I try to sync up my Palm and it starts giving me fatal error messages.

Why? Because the cool scheduling software modified a couple of the appointments in my schedule book to the point where my real datebook couldn't read them anymore. Ver' Ver' bad. Took an hour of resets, memory purges, and HotSyncs to get the whole mess straightened out, and I have a meg worth of extra space on my Palm now, so I know I lost something.

And that's why I'm very nervous about not having my laptop along with me on the trip to England -- because it was the multiple HotSyncs that brought my baby back to me. Dave can worry that the U.S. and England will be at war with Iraq while we're in Britain visiting many famous, high-profile landmarks ripe for terrorism; I'm worried I might lose access to my tech toys while we're there. The End.

The following message was posted at Firefly: Immediate Assistance this afternoon:

According to a 20th Century Fox source, UPN has decided not to pick up Firefly. While the show appealed to them, they didn't feel it was a good fit with their current programming needs.
We'll have a new direction to point you in and several new graphics sometime tomorrow.
"I know many people have been waiting for news, so although the information is not complete, I thought it best to provide the news as soon as possible. We at Firefly: Immediate Assistance understand that there are other viable options besides UPN. Tomorrow we will begin another phase in our battle to save Firefly."

The First Evil has a blog. On LiveJournal, natch.

Still, pretty funny.

I finished up The Onion Girl, by Charles de Lint today, one of several books he's set in the fictional locale of Newford. Interesting stuff, and the first thing I've ever read by de Lint (I think -- certainly the first novel-length thing). Lots of good characters. Onion Girl is one of the later books in the Newford series, so there is a sense of having walked into an ongoing conversation between people who have all known each other for about twenty years, but it was still enjoyable.

De Lint is obviously comfortable writing his characters and has known them all for a good long time -- so much so that a book like Onion Girl, which is much less about the story and much more about exploring his characters in painstaking depth, doesn't bother him or his readers much. In some ways it reminded me of an excerpt from a (or any) long-running Amber campaign that you read one character diary from -- obviously fascinating to the involved participants, but less so to those who don't know what exactly's going on.

Still, brimming with lots of neat ideas, good prose, and lots of small feisty women with unkempt hair and commitment issues. I'll be happy to find and read more of his stuff.

In related news, we're going to test drive a Mini at two this afternoon. :)

Update:

Getting a Mini has become much more likely. Very comfortable (more room for the driver in fact than my truck), very zippy, corners like it's on rails, excellent handling in general, and optimized for an intelligent driver -- I really enjoyed the half hour they let us just take off and drive it (without even a sales guy). The clutch is very forgiving and I really liked the action on the manual... I can't even see where getting the Cooper S would be necessary -- the plain old Cooper I drove had plenty of juice, and that's something I'm really picky about.

Then you look at numbers and realize that the highway MPG is double my pickup's and even the city mpg is still 11 better than my truck's highway mpg. There's a lot to like.

Jackie even liked it, and she really didn't want to.

I got a form in the mail to apply to be a Neilsen family.