Archive for September, 2008

A new definition of “Crime TV”

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

What the hell was that?!?!?!

The premier episode of Knight Rider was terrible.  I mean, really, really, really terrible.  The kind of terrible which can only be made when that much money is involved.

Straight off, the “Ford Rep” who insisted that it was necessary for force a Ford (F-150?) pickup into the show needs to be shot.  Preferably dragged into the street, beaten soundly, then shot.

Next, the drunken producer who felt the show needed a little “sex” and dreamed up the contrived excuse to get The Girl in her underwear…  First, good job.  Second, may you never work in show business again.

Finally, whoever wanted to add “mystery” by having Mike not remember his past (“Oh yeah, you asked to marry me 3 years ago.  Did I forget to mention that?”) I simply ask that the reproductive sterilization is complete.

Seriously tho, it’s freaking Knight Rider, it shouldn’t be possible to get this wrong.  Yet, somehow, they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

This should be taught in classes as an example of less is more.  It’s like children making television.  Everything is turned to 11.  I could be fine with KITT changing colour, that would have been fine – cool even, but no – he has to change into a freaking pickup or the ugliest muscle car ever seen.  One moment KITT is doing 377MPH, the next – he can’t catch a sports car.  What?  What kind of supercar is KITT suppose to be?

The writing on this show amounts to a legacy assassination.  I loved Knight Rider when I was a kid and so did you.  (Don’t lie, you did.)  I know it was 80′s television pap but in my mind’s eye it was awesomeness given shape and corny dialog.  What I needed from the new series is something to stand up to that.  And don’t tell me it can’t be done, Battlestar Galactia is a prime example that it can.  And it would have been simple.  Tone everything down to the point where we can believe it’s true-ish and it’d be remarkable.

The last shot of the car sums everything up perfectly.  You have the blood red of KITT’s scanners, the emerald green of the LASERS(!!!) and the deep blue glow from under the car.  Primary colours for toddlers.

If I had been there, I could have saved it.  I could have told them, I would have told them – “That’s stupid”.

And that might have made all the difference.

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Hollowpoint Sniper Hyperbole

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

I was driving to pick up Vietnamese from a little place just around the corner from us and I was listening to 88.5 Live FM and a song was playing in which I heard:

“I’s the b’y that built the boat
I’s the b’y that sailed her
I’s the b’y the sunk the ship
You’re the one that save me“

The first two lines of that are taken from a very old Newfoundland song and it blew my mind when I heard it on the radio.  I had to look up.

I haven’t been able to find too much in the way of actual facts, but the song is by Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker and they are indeed Canadian, but not from Newfoundland.  Which just adds to the mystery.

I’m hypnotized by the song now, and I think their T-Shirt looks pretty cool.

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09/09/08 – What I want.

Friday, September 5th, 2008

So Apple has another really big show going on Tuesday the 9th.  There’s talk of new MacBooks, iPod Touch ‘s, a fairly reliable rumour of a new Nano (which sounds pretty stupid, 4 generations and each one is radically different from the last – it better be worth it…) and even iTunes 8.

And I don’t want any of it.  MacBooks will never be cheap enough for me to buy new, so I don’t care.  Pictures of the new Nano make me wonder why they still call it a “nano”.  And anything added to iTunes now will be for people that use the iTMS – which I won’t.

The iPod Touch, however, does have a foothold in my mind.  And let me go into why.

Right now, for music in my living room I use a old laptop with iTunes on it and a IR remote so that I don’t have to stand over it to change songs.  It works ok. Not great, but almost good enough.  Almost.

I’ve been looking for a network music player to replace the setup.  But everything has it’s shortcomings.  Slim Devices has a lot of good hardware.  There’s the Squeezebox Duet which puts a small black box next to the speakers and you control everything from a full colour controller.  Of course, it costs $399.  The new Squeezebox Boom is also very, very cool.  Build in speakers with excellent sound – you can take it anywhere you can hit your WiFi signal.  Like outside when you’re having a BBQ.  That’s very cool.  Only I have to search through 18,000 songs on that small display.  Fun.

All of these play your music from software you need running on your computer.  And this is where it really falls down.  There are no dynamic playlists.  Or song ratings.

What?!

Sure, you can create static playlists, but who the hell wants to do that any more?  If I have a list of favourite songs and I add a album to my collection, which has a new favourite song, then I have to go through the web based interface to add it.  That’s not cool.  I should be able to just set it to 5 stars straight from the player and forget about it.  I saw a plugin which gave song ratings, but that should be built in from the start.  Core functionality should never be a plugin.

You can get SqueezeCenter to access your iTunes Library so it can access iTunes’ dynamic playlists but that just seems like a cludge and I find it a little distasteful.

Now, on the other end of things Apple has a small solution to my problem.  With current versions of iTunes you can do two nifty things.  You can play music from it over a network to a Airport Express with “AirTunes“.  Goodbye laptop.  And with a iPod Touch, or iPhone, you can use the iTunes Remote to control both iTunes, and AirTunes.  So you get the little touch sensitive controller, the reduced clutter of a laptop free living room and the refined database capabilities of iTunes.

So what’s the problem?  I hate iTunes.

iTunes is good at what it’s for, keeping you in line and directed to iTMS to spend, spend, spend.  But it’s not very open to “unsactioned” ideas.  It would also mean that I would have to keep a Windows or Mac machine running as my server when I’d prefer Ubuntu, where possible.

There’s a ray of light in all of this.  Dim, dirty, but it’s there.  When I picked up my Drobo I was faced with a choice.  Run it on Linux or XP with a upper limit of 2TB (which sounds like a lot right now) or run it on Vista or OSX for up to 16TB.  Vista is not an option so I picked up a older PowerMac running 10.5 for fairly cheap.

Sooooo……  I mean, it’s already got iTunes on it, right?

I’ve started to think about how all this would work.  Headless PowerMac in the basement running iTunes, Airport Express plugged into the wall and the stereo and iPod Touch controlling it all from where ever I want.  Nice.  Hell, I even get an iPod to carry to work with me.

Wait….  how would I sync the iPod?  I don’t want to have to go down under the stairs to put the iPod in the dock just to sync songs and ratings.  That would be stupid.  My laptop is running Ubuntu, and even if it was capable of running iTunes that means the rating changes still wouldn’t end up on the computer in the basement.

Which finally brings me around to what I really want from Apple:  Wireless sync for the iPod Touch. Take a closer look at the Airport Express – it has a usb port for printing.  I’m betting that could also be used to charge the Touch, and if the Touch won’t sync itself over WiFi, why can’t the Airport Express act as a bridge between the PowerMac and the iPod?

It would be so neat, so clean in design, so Apple.

They’ll never do it.

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