Andy's Blog

Destination L.A.

Deciding that I needed to "get out of dodge" this weekend, Mike and I headed out for sunny and balmy (ha!) Los Angeles. The joke, of course, is that it was neither sunny nor especially warm the whole time we were there. But, that didn't stop us from having a good time.

Our first order of business was meeting up with Mike's office mate for drinks at a semi-trendy bar in the West Hollywood area. That was my first dash of L.A. culture -- where Mike and I were immediately outed. Our lack of designer jeans apparently shouted "outsider" to the natives.

We stayed with Tamsen, a friend of Elizabeth's that I first met on a camping trip last year. Tamsen lives in Manhattan Beach, a part of L.A. that I quite liked. It had a nice, small town feel, and is situated quite close to the Pacific (hence the name). Tamsen was a fantastic host, and on Saturday the three of us tromped around L.A., until we finally met up with Elizabeth on a dusking hike up Mount Hollywood:

L-R: Elizabeth, Tamsen, and Mike

Dinner was at a Sushi restaurant that Tamsen favors. I think that my opinion of Sushi has changed since living in California -- good Sushi is okay, bad Sushi is still off the list. Thankfully, this was very good Sushi, and I think that we all left the restaurant quite satisfied.

After staying up way too late, Mike and I headed off for Ojai, California, the details of which I will cover in a subsequent post.

Overall, I had a good time on the trip, and of course I took lots of pictures. I find it to be somewhat surprising that I have lived in the bay area for around two and a half years, and this is the first time that I have made it down to L.A. My impression of the city is that it is quite different from San Francisco, both in culture and in content. I didn't really have a chance to explore more than a small fraction of what the city has to offer. But it was nice to get away, and for sure I will go back.

-Andy.

Visiting with Lonnie and Randy

On the way back from L.A., Mike and I stopped by Ojai, California, home of my second cousin Lonnie, her husband Randy, and their family. I have not seen them in quite a long time, and it is probably some sort of travesty of familyness that it has taken me this long to get down there. Here is a group photo with Ojai in the background:

Mike, Lonnie, Randy, and me

It was a really good visit. Mike and I were fascinated by Lonnie's miniature horses. She has around sixteen of them, and she takes them to shows, etc. around California and beyond. These horses are a sight to behold -- they are so small, that hey almost don't look like horses. Yet, when they trot, snort, or neigh -- you immediately realize that they are the real deal.

Lonnie and Randy showed took us to lunch at a superb italian restaurant, and showed us a bit of Ojai. The town itself fits my mind's eye vision of an ideal, picturesque, California town. The view of the valley is akin to something of a storybook. The downtown, with its limits on growth and stores owned by mega corporations, has a pleasant feel to it.

Although we only had a few hours to spend there, Ojai was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. The pictures from Ojai start on page five of the gallery that I posted. On the way back to the Bay Area, Mike and I took 101 (on Lonnie's suggestion). This proved to be the correct choice -- as some of the scenery that you can see from the road is amazing.

-Andy.

Why hasn't "Serenity" made like, a jillion dollars?

I have seen "Serenity" twice now in the theatre, and plan to go at least one more time. Since watching "Serenity" the second time, I have re-watched the original TV series that spawned it, "Firefly".

All 14 episodes (only 11 of which saw the light of day on TV).

And the conclusion that I have come to is that "Firefly", the show, was brilliant. I like the camera work -- how not all of the shots are perfectly lined up. How the effects shots have zooms, blurs, and lens flares. The dialog is amazing -- not just for the "parlor trick" of the use of Chinese. But instead, for the entirely new slang that the writers created. Slang that when you hear it, you think "people don't talk like this". Yet, you understand exactly what the characters mean. And it makes perfect sense that they talk that way -- because they live in their world (and they are inviting you in for a peek).

Yet, as good as the show is (and it is very good), "Serenity", the movie is even better. The visuals leap off of the screen. It is even funnier than the show. There is even more drama, and more peril.

In short, Joss Whedon has made a movie that I am going to be worshipping for a long time to come.

Which is why I am so perplexed at its seemingly dismal box office performance. The reviews from the critics were far and way on the good side of positive. The movie had mad internet buzz.

But it also had several things going against it. The first is that this is an unabashedly Sci-Fi film, and that apparently just turns people off. Even worse, Joss had to try and please two different types of viewers -- those who had seen the show, and those who hadn't. I think that he did a pretty good job of this, but my guess is that people who saw the show liked the movie a whole lot more than those who hadn't.

Which brings me to what I think is really going on. The Firefly/Serenity universe takes a little bit of time to get into it. As I recall, Sara and I weren't transformed into devoted Firefly fans after watching "The Train Job". It took about three or four episodes before the series began to fully reveal itself. It was at this point that the show "clicked" in my brain, and I became enraptured by it.

So, that is what I think happened. It takes time and energy to really appreciate "Serenity", and that is something that most people don't want to devote to their entertainment these days. And it is a crying shame, because it is from that space that some of the best entertainment comes from.

-Andy.

Playing with FreeBSD 6

So, I picked up a spare desktop recently at work, and I have finally wound down enough of current development/deadlilne stuff to play with it. I decided to install FreeBSD on this machine, to serve as my sandbox for playing with hot new Open Source softwares (like Wikis, social bookmarking apps, etc.). My sub-goal, however, is to play with FreeBSD. My personal webserver in my apartment has been running FreeBSD 4.x for years, but I have kindof "lost track" of current developments in FreeBSD.

To that end, I installed FreeBSD 6.0 beta 4 (which I had on CD), and used cvsup and "make world" to upgrade to the just-released FreeBSD 6.0 RC1. So far, things have been quite smooth. FreeBSD detected all of the hardware, and for being not-yet-finished, things seem as stable and polished as ever.

Due to the fact that Ubuntu Breezy came out the other day, I configured X and Firefox on the FreeBSD machine, so that I could use it today while my main Ubuntu desktop was upgrading itself. The only problem that I had was convincing my Logitech USB trackball to make the "scroll" button emit a "middle click" in FreeBSD. This works like a charm on Ubuntu, but with FreeBSD, I had to do some hacking. I tracked the mouse management stuff to a daemon called "moused(8)". It seems like the problem that I had was that by default, my mouse was emitting button 4, but I wanted it to emit button 2 (middle mouse button). So, I found the -m option in the man page, which looked like it would do what I wanted:

     -m N=M  Assign the physical button M to the logical button N.  You may
             specify as many instances of this option as you like.  More than
             one physical button may be assigned to a logical button at the
             same time.  In this case the logical button will be down, if
             either of the assigned physical buttons is held down.  Do not put
             space around `='.

Unfortunately, the first 20 or so times that I tried this option, I couldn't get it to work right. The mouse buttons either didn't behave properly, or my button 4 didn't emulate the middle mouse button. Finally, after much struggling, I re-read that passage very carefully. The option is N=M, but the text immediately following that talks about assigning M to N. Confusing!

But, I made the proper adjustments, and now all is well. I used FreeBSD running xfce4 all day today, and pleasantly enjoyed the experience. We'll see what Ubunty Breezy holds in store for me on Monday.

-Andy.

Apple's big new thing: TV downloads

As I'm sure you are well aware, Apple had another Media Event today. If you don't have time to watch the 50 minute (ish) presentation, there is plenty of coverage around the web. There was a new iMac, including new software (Photo Booth and Front Row). A new version of iTunes. And oh yeah, some sort of new video-capable iPod thingy.

But the really big announcement, was the fact that you can now buy episodes of TV shows on iTunes, for only $1.99 a pop.

This is huge, people. And a lot of the commentary on that I'm seeing on the Internet is getting this wrong. John Gruber, for example, says:

"$1.99 for each TV show, in only 320x240 resolution, doesn’t seem like a good deal to me. I already get these shows with my cable TV; paying for them again in a crummy low-res format strikes me as a bad deal — like paying for songs I already own on CD. Of course, I think ringtones sound like a bad deal, too, but people buy billions of them."

There are several ways in which this is in fact a fantastic deal. The first is that this is the only legal way to download TV over the Internet. And if you are into a serial series, like "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives", this will matter to you. Because if you miss an episode, you are going to want to see it. Or if you didn't know to watch the episode, but all of your co-workers tell you it was great while standing around the water cooler, you are going to want to see it.

And for the last several years, Bittorrent and other P2P networks have given viewers who are dedicated enough and technical enough the ability to download shows that they missed. But now Apple is giving this ability to everyone with iTunes (hint: that is a lot of people), at a reasonable price. I have seen some grousing about the quality of the video, but I don't think that's going to be a big issue. After years of downloading super crappy renditions of my favorite shows from the P2P networks, 320x240 h.264 video sounds like a dream.

But all of those reasons are just the tip of the iceberg. Just like Apple did with digital music when it opened the iTunes Music Store, they are now creating a new legal download market for TV. For years I have been reading pundits saying that the Internet is going to change the way we watch TV. Well, now it is finally happening.

But you don't have to take my word for the fact that this was Apple's most important announcement today. Take Steve Jobs' word for it -- This was his "One More Thing". And he even had Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, out on stage to drive the point home. The fact that Apple was able to negotiate this deal is huge. And even though it seem under-whelming now, because there are only 5 shows to choose from -- think about the future. When there are hundreds of shows. Thousands. The idea is staggering.

Oh, and my "one more thing"? I will be buying one of those new 20" iMacs soon. They look sweet. :)

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: macintosh, ipod, iTunes, Apple

Pictures from my Wheaton trip

I finally put the pictures from my recent trip back home online:

This is the Wheaton Theater, now a protected historical landmark, apparently. I'm told that this means that they have to keep the outside the same, but can do whatever they want inside. That is, if they had any money...

-Andy.

dog nose

So, I am back from my extended weekend in Wheaton:

It was a pretty good trip, very relaxing. I actually had time to just sit around and do nothing, which can be a nice change of pace. Aside from seeing the aforementioned "Serenity", I also saw "Flightplan" and "Transporter 2". Flightplan was okay -- a reasonable suspense movie. And while Transporter 2 wasn't as good as the first one, it still provided some solid popcorn entertainment. Serenity, of course, ruled them all.

I also took a bunch of pictures of downtown Wheaton, as well as my parents house, and of course, Scout, that I will try and post soon. And while I haven't had a chance to post this yet, the Yosemite pictures are in fact online (although they are not annotated how I would like yet).

So much to do, so little time...

-Andy.